STARTING OUR SECOND DECADE!! A big success...

....The 2011 Towards Advent Festival was perhaps the best-ever....large crowds, glorious music, excellent speakers, and a wonderful buzz in the Westminster Cathedral Hall as people met and talked and enjoyed tea and cakes and bought books and cards and craft goods and rosaries and DVDs and statues and icons and learned about the work of so many different Catholic groups and organisations...

The Society of Catholic Artists had a wonderful display of paintings, there was singing from the Gallery Choir of the Cathedral Choir School, there were some beautiful hand-crafted goods made by a number of different groups and charities, the Association for Latin in the Liturgy was showing a DVD of a splendid Mass,there were books from Fisher Press and the Catholic Truth Society and other publishers, there was a lovely Mass book for children produced by Second Spring, and a great range of Christmas cards and gifts from Aid to the Church in Need...the Hinsley Room was packed to capacity for the excellent talk from Mgr Keith Newton of the Ordinariate, and then packed out again for the presentation celebrating the life of Blessed John Paul II by the Divine Comedy young people's drama group from Oxford.

Various religious orders were represented and it was a pleasure to welcome the new Community of Our Lady of Walsingham in their blue-and-white habits.

Knights of St Columba, the Catenians, and the Association of Catholic Women, all of whom are reprersented on the organising committee, worked with enthusiasm all day and this was a wonderful community effort which showed the Church at its best...and, yes, we're already planning for 2012!