The Aigburth parish of St Charles and St Thomas More were delighted to be awarded CAFOD’s LiveSimply Award after several years of putting together activities to demonstrate their commitment to living simply.  

The Covid years stretched out the process longer than expected, but it didn’t dampen the efforts of the Justice and Peace group to bring together the parish in this important journey.

The process started in 2017 with a LiveSimply Mass, attended by Colette Byrne from CAFOD, encouraging parishioners to pledge support by writing out what they promised to do to Live Simply, such as walking to church, recycling more and donating and buying from charity shops.  The Messy Church mounted them on a wooden tree for display in the church.

A range of initiatives were organised under each of the headings drawing in all ages of the parish and different groups such as Little Church, SVP, Afternoon Tea group, and many more.

Many of the actions undertaken are now conducted each year –signing of Christmas cards for prisoners, recycling within the parish, Food Bank collections, Good Friday Frugal lunch (which includes a speaker from a charity or group that work with disadvantaged or vulnerable people) to name but a few.

The Mass at which the Award was given was said in memory of Ita MacDonnell, a faithful member of the J&P group and long-standing parishioner, who unfortunately died before she could see all her hard work come to fruition.  

The church was honoured to have Ita’s niece present at the Mass, who received the award on behalf of the Parish from Colette Byrne.

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