Pluscarden Abbey Awarded RTIF Grant

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Pluscarden Abbey has been awarded a grant of £80,500 from the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund. The object of the award at Pluscarden is the provision of a new parking area outside the immediate curtilage of the Abbey. Day visitors will thereby be encouraged to leave their vehicles outside the gates and walk up the entrance drive, thus helping to preserve the tranquillity of the grounds beside the Abbey and also enhance their own experience of the beauty of the setting.

The Monaco Boys Choir

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Monaco Boys Choir, “Les Petits Chanteurs de Monaco” is one of the world’s leading youth choirs and is celebrated internationally for its repertoire of classical and traditional works. The choir was established by Prince Albert I of Monaco in 1904 and comprises 30 boys, aged between 9 and 18 years of age. Continue reading

Retirement of Joyce at Diocesan Office

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Mrs Joyce Webster who has assisted three successive bishops so invaluably for almost 20 years is retiring from the Diocesan Office in the first week of July.

On Monday 1 July, in St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, there will be a Mass of Thanksgiving at 18:00 for her many years of faithful service, followed by a reception in the Cathedral Hall. You are all warmly invited. Continue reading

Northern Catholic History Notes

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Alasdair Roberts and Ann Dean’s History Notes chronicle Catholic life in the North of Scotland. From the fascinating story of Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, close friend of Tsar Peter the Great, who rose in rank from trooper to full general, to the intriguing tale of Malcolm Hay, the code breaking laird, who headed up the War Office’s Cryptology Department in the First World War. Continue reading

Annual Diocesan Pilgrimage to Pluscarden 2019

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An invitation is extended to you to join the Annual Diocesan Pilgrimage to Pluscarden Abbey on Sunday 30 June 2019. We are looking forward to another pleasurable day, which will be enjoyed by parishioners, clergy and religious, coming together from all corners of the Diocese to join in celebration of the occasion. This year we will be specially welcoming “Catechists and the children they teach” from across the diocese. Continue reading

Homily for the Ascension

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We are keeping a beautiful feast.

“As he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven”. So the Gospel describes what we are celebrating. “He withdrew from them”: he brought to an end the 40 days of post-Resurrection appearances to his disciples. He “was carried up into heaven”: returning to the Father from whom he came, taken in his humanity, definitively, irreversibly into God’s heavenly domain and into the fullness of who he is. He leapt, says an Anglo-Saxon poet. And in that “leap”, “the host of angels / … was made glad with rapture / with joy…[and] / the play of the prince became an eternal delight” (Cynewulf, Christ II). The disciples, too, “went back to Jerusalem full of joy”, rejoicing in the joy of the one they loved. Continue reading

Diocesan Walking Pilgrimage to Pluscarden

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As an element of the Annual Diocesan Pilgrimage on Sunday 30th June to Pluscarden, a Walking Pilgrimage is being organised by ‘Uplifting Walks’. Walkers have the option of completing either the Full Pilgrimage which is 9 miles or a Mini Pilgrimage which is 3 miles.

Pilgrims will arrive at Pluscarden for quiet time followed by Mass at 15:00, presided by Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB. Continue reading

Family Life Centre, Aberdeen

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St. Mary’s Family life centre is a Diocesan Office for Family Life Issues and is to be used by the Holy Family Sisters of the Needy and their collaborators in line with their apostolate of caring for the poor and needy, to attend to occurring family issues like: crisis pregnancy, abortion mindedness, post abortion crisis, marriage crisis, barrenness, intimate partner domestic violence, girls and women in difficult situations. Continue reading