My last weekend at St Joseph’s as your Parish Priest

My last weekend at St Joseph’s as your Parish Priest will be the 24^th/25^th August.  As I have previously said, ‘I have had fourteen happy years here with you and I will be very sad to leave’.  I do hope that as many of you will be able join me that weekend as we say good bye together.

Father Neil

For those who missed the announcement last weekend, which was very difficult to make.  Bishop Marcus has asked me to move from this parish at the end of August and take up a new appointment as Parish Priest in Christ the King, Bramley and Holy Family, Wortley, each with its own primary school.  The two Leeds parishes are to be amalgamated after Easter.  I am also to continue in my role as Chaplain at Wetherby Young Offenders.  Your new Parish Priest will be Father Stephen Webb who is currently the Parish Priest of St Clare’s in Bradford.  Father Webb is a kind man with a lot of pastoral experience.  He is also working at the army college in our town.  You are lucky to be getting him as your Parish Priest.

 

Although I have been expecting a move for a while, it still came as a shock.  I will have been ordained a priest twenty one years in July; fourteen of them have been spent with you.  There have been some wonderful times and some sad times for all of us and naturally, I will be sad to leave you and this place, which I have come to regard as my home.   This new appointment will certainly be a challenge and one which I am both daunted by and looking forward to.  That said, as always I am relying on your prayers as I prepare for this move and I ask you to pray for Father Webb who is also having to say goodbye.  Be assured of my prayers.