DISASTER BROUGHT US TOGETHER

David Rosemeyer who is a member of the prayer group at St Joseph’s parish in New Malden, Surrey, tells how their parish has become twinned to an Italian parish.

The recent news of the horrific earthquake in Haiti, made me want to share about how we became involved after a much smaller, but equally horrifying earthquake in Italy last year. L’Aquila, a town in the mountains 60 miles north east of Rome, suffered a devastating earthquake on 6th April 2009. At one thirty in the morning, an earth tremor measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale caused thousands of homes and historic and beautiful buildings to collapse. Houses even slipped off mountains blocking roads as people tried desperately to escape the ground shaking under their feet. Over three hundred people died and 1500 were injured, 65,000 people were made homeless 40,000 of whom were until very recently still living in tents.

Malcolm Surridge and his wife Felicity, who are members of our parish, St Joseph’s New Malden, often visit Italy because of their professional interests. Malcolm is a well known artist and Felicity a professional singer. They were in Aquila soon after the disaster struck and wanted to do something to help, so they contacted our parish priest Fr Peter Edwards and as a parish we set up an Earthquake appeal for the town.

The parishioners of St Joseph’s set to work to fund raise. We organised an art and crafts fair, a concert of remembrance, several cake sales, a parish lunch, a quiz night, and pre-Advent Fayre and raised over £10,000. While in Italy Malcolm and Felicity had made contact with the parish priest of Civita di Bagno, a suburb of L’Aquila, whose Church, San Raniero had been destroyed. His name was Fr Gerald Abuachi, who is originally from Nigeria. We invited him to come to St Joseph’s and he gave us a moving account of the events that followed the earthquake.

While our fund-raising was deliberately restricted to three months, ending in January 2010, we have been developing twinning arrangements with a number of parish groups, including youth clubs, folk music groups, First Holy Communion programme, and now we are planning youth exchange experiences plus a parish pilgrimage, later this year, to Rome and to San Raniero, which we have twinned with.

Happily both parishes have charismatic prayer groups too and we have already received prayer requests and the assurance that their prayer group is praying for us. During his visit Fr Gerald joined our Monday evening prayer meeting which we hold in the Lady chapel, which is just big enough for our present attendance. About 30 or so regularly attend our group coming from the surrounding parishes and including many different nationalities. We are also blessed with two musicians who play the keyboards and guitar.

As well as our regular Monday meetings, we also have occasional Masses with prayer for healing. Mass is followed by a period of Eucharistic adoration, opportunity for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and personal prayer with the laying on of hands. This all fits into an hour and half and finishes with Benediction.

Jesus said, “In truth I tell you once again, if two of you on earth agree to ask anything at all, it will be granted to you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18.19-20.)