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JOBS GO AS DIOCESE TIGHTENS BELT
"The cupboard is bare" - Bishop Patrick
This is not the brightest of starts to a New Year. On November 10th all our parishes received a financial report from the Diocesan Trustees indicating that the diocese was in trouble and needed to save money. The Voice invited Mr Stephen Moore, the Diocesan Administrator, to explain this report more fully and this he has kindly done for us here.
Just what these financial savings would mean soon showed. On Tuesday, November 29th, Simon Stewart of the Diocesan Education Centre, and an important link with the Centre for this paper was told that his job would have to go, as the diocese could no longer afford him. Oddly enough, the new Diocesan Directory, which arrived the very next day, gives Simon's name as the contact person for four different areas of the Centre's work. Even allowing for printing deadlines, letting him go appears to have been a hurried decision.
In general, reaction to the Report has been one of shock that the diocese should find itself in this state, but opinions seem sharply divided, about what it may mean to those services the Diocese has traditionally provided for its parishes.
 Voice Columnist, Simon Stewart: a victim of the new financial measures.
Editor of The Voice, Fr Val Farrell said, "Given the quality of the man himself this can only be a great loss to the diocese. Certainly it would be good for this paper if we could retain Simon's services in some way, but his link with the Education Centre is a loss both for it and for The Voice. But who knows what the future holds for him now?"
BUT THERE IS HOPE
Fr Philip Conner is ordained by Bishop O'Donoghue at St. Maria Goretti's church, Preston. It was Saturday, November 12th, just two days after the bad financial news dropped on our doormats. Surely God does not abandon his people. [Report here]
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