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MINUTES OF THE PARISH
PASTORAL COUNCIL HELD ON 13 JANUARY 2004
Summary
Present:
Fr. Vincent Gallogley, Fr. John Kealy, Barry O’Halpin, Judith Carr, Yvonne
Nielsen, Yvonne Stausboll, Greg Kaufmann, Jeff Thomson & Walter Huyghe.
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Apologies:
Pat Farrington, Brigid Alty, Horst Dengler, Susanne Lehne, Brian O’Neill,
Paddy McEneaney, Johny Van Der Bracht and Suzanne Woods.
The meeting began at 19.50 hrs and Greg said the opening prayer.
There were no matters arising from the December minutes so the minutes were
approved.
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Charities:
Yvonne has updated the guidelines, which are produced as an attachment to
these minutes. The regular appeal to our twin parish in Rwanda had been
overlooked so Yvonne will contact the other two parishes in Kraainem to find
out when they hold their appeal and we will do ours at the same time. She
has also added that the Confirmation group holds their appeal at Pentecost.
The Good Samaritan fund and the money gathered from charity appeals are now
held in separate accounts.
This document was approved by the Council.
The second document related to the Lenten Appeals, which will begin on 28/29
February. Yvonne has since received a request from Clementine George
concerning an orphanage in Botswana for the children of AIDS victims and
also there is the situation in Iran with the aftermath of the earthquake.
There are six appeals in Lent, two of which are taken up by the Cardinal’s
Appeals and relate to charities in Africa. After much deliberation, it was
decided that the other four weeks should be given to the following
charities: Alternative, De Ark de Laken (both Belgian charities), Lisiecki
Care (Poland) and Comise (Bolivia). It was decided that details of CARITAS,
who are the Belgian liaison with charities in Iran, could be left at the
back of the Church and /or have a basket where people could put individual
donations. Yvonne will continue to look for a smaller charity that has links
to Iran that might better serve our Parish.
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Education and Evangelisation:
Brian had requested that, due to the high number of children making their
First Communion this year, there could be three First Communion Sundays. Fr.
Vincent could see no problem with this and we will put this to the parents
at a future meeting. There is also to be a quick meeting of the teachers
this Sunday after 10.00 Mass to discuss this and the timings of
Masses/classes. Brian and Judith will report back at the next meeting.
ACTION: Brian and Judith.
Over the past year/18 months, the Parish has been able to use the services
of a qualified youth minister named Audrey Walters and she has been a great
asset to the Parish. We have had the benefit of her expertise during the
Alpha course and several of our young parishioners accompanied her to
Portugal to help with the rebuilding of an orphanage. We have had a request
from All Saints in Waterloo to help to pay for the cost of enabling Audrey
to stay in Belgium until she leaves in the summer. The Finance Council will
approve the payment of 1750 Euro if the Parish Council is willing for this
to go ahead. The Council overwhelmingly approved this. We will also be able
to sit on the panel when the search for a successor to Audrey begins later
in the year.
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Worship:
Greg will continue with the training of the Lectors and Eucharistic
Ministers. The recruitment for these ministries has been high.
He will soon begin work on the services/music for Holy Week (seeing who is
available) and will organise the Ash Wednesday service. ACTION: Greg.
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Christian Service:
Barry will do a safety check of the crèche and will remove all the old and
hazardous toys. Excess good things can be sent to St. Gilles.
It has also been decided to have a lower age limit in the crèche of 18
months and an upper one of 5 years.
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Parish Life:
Fr. Vincent would like a few extra people (preferably in pairs) to come and
count the collections. Angela can give further details about this.
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Maintenance:
Re the meeting with the Leuven authorities, we have been informed that it
will not be possible to renew our lapsed planning approval so we now have
only two options open to us:
a) submit a plan for the redevelopment of the Parish Centre (medium term)
coupled with a request for the temporary placement of Portacabins
b) request permission to have Portacabins erected on the recently purchased
land (which has a building permit)
Our architects will meet with the Kraainem authorities during the next
week/10 days in an effort to arrive at a final decision on our Portacabins.
Being realistic, we will almost certainly not have any Portacabins in place
before the end of the 2003/2004 Sunday school year.
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A.O.B:
Standing orders: a decision has been made to have a very short, precise
appeal made by Fr. Vincent and Fr. John at all Masses this coming weekend
(17/18 January). The timing of this appeal was deliberate so as not to clash
with the charity appeal of last weekend and still early enough in January to
place emphasis on the New Year Resolution aspect of the request for standing
orders. To maximise this appeal, there will be no other appeals from the
altar this weekend.
Jeff said the closing prayer and the meeting ended at 21.00 hrs.
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