Dear Parishioners & Visitors,

Today I am taking the liberty of writing the Gospel. ‘This is the best team and the best chance we have had for decades to become world champions,’ screamed the headlines. A few isolated observers warned that they were not as good as was being suggested. But the vast majority of the press, radio and TV experts said: ‘Rubbish, this is a golden age with Rooney, Gerrard and what’s his name?’ There are papers to be sold, air time to be filled, merchandise to be flogged and on top of all that, Maradona (The Hand of God) is made, the Germans have no experience, the Brazilians are mostly other people’s cast offs and nobody likes their manager and the Spanish are too temperamental.

  So the Football Association sent our great heroes off to take South Africa by storm and conquer the world. It soon became apparent that unknown names representing the USA, Algeria and Germany were the equal or better than our golden heroes. So now the press, TV and radio experts collectively suffer acute and permanent amnesia and seek blood and humiliation from our much chastened multimillionaires. They were described as ‘failures’, ‘a shambles’, ‘traitors’ and of course a foreign referee denied them fair play. Now, the experts who were so wrong are free to act as judge and jury on the nation’s behalf. Good job capital punishment has been done away with! Jesus’ team of 72 in a very uncertain era had a much better time than our modern heroes, but they did not have Rupert Murdoch then – how lucky is that?

• We do not have details about the movement of people or how many etc for the Pope’s visit as yet.
• Hearty congratulations to John and Elizabeth Mitchell who celebrated their 64^th wedding anniversary on Wednesday June 30^th.
• This will be Fr Paul’s last weekend here before his holidays. Thanks Paul and have an enjoyable time.
• Fr Steve D’Arcy plans to come for a month or so on August 9^th.
• This weekend is the last with us for John and Susan Salamone and Dominic and Roeo. They have been here for three years and are now returning to the USA. John will be stationed in New Orleans. Our loss is their gain.
• For a very useful prayer internet site try www.sacredspace.ie. 20 languages and thousands use it every day.

God Bless, Father John