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the changes carried out in response to the challenges posed by falling Mass attendances and a shrinking newspaper industry. It was in September 2004 that the Pic morphed into a monthly, fullcolour magazine, a necessary adaptation to the changing demand for print publications – as well as the diminishing advertising revenues available in the face of the digital revolution.

Kim O’Brien, who has been managing director of CPMM Ltd since 1991, explains: ‘Had it stayed as a weekly, paidfor title, the paper would have folded. Financially it wouldn’t have survived as sales revenue declined and we were up against falling numbers going to church. If, at the point of sale, there are less people there, how are we going to sell it?’

Kim has the Pic in her blood. Her father, Ken Till, worked for Mersey Mirror for two decades and was managing director from 1988 until his sudden death three years later. She sees the bigger picture. For the Pic, challenges are nothing new. ‘I have records going way back and it’s interesting reading them as you’d almost think you were reading things from the present day,’ she reflects. ‘If it’s not a reference to a recession, it’s the reduction in Mass attendances and the challenges of the religious press and publishing as a whole.

‘There were already reductions in Mass attendances back in the 70s,’ Kim continues. ‘That continual, gradual decline of people going to church meant that selling a newspaper in church, had its challenges. Looking back through our records, I found that in 1986, weekly sales seemed to be around 12,000. In 1988 sales were no more than 10,000. At the point we changed to become a monthly, free publication, we were selling 6,000 copies.’

With today’s mix of print and digital, the Pic can reach many more people. Indeed during the pandemic it was the only diocesan publication in England and Wales to come out each month in both print and online formats. ‘We now print around 13,500 to 14,000 copies,’ says Kim. ‘It’s a really strong print circulation to still have.

‘It’s also available digitally and it goes out in an e-newsletter. Since the pandemic we’ve increased engagement with parishes in terms of making sure the digital edition is circulated as widely as possibly, especially when people couldn’t go to churches. Archbishop Worlock with Archbishop Beck

Cathedral Golden Jubilee 2017

Reflecting the history of the archdiocese ‘It is a publication that has stood firm against everything that has happened in publishing. The Catholic Pic today is probably the largest-circulated Catholic publication of its type in the whole of the UK. There’s not really many other dioceses that still have a printed publication with the pagination, quality and circulation of the Catholic Pic.

Looking to the future The Pic can no longer call on a small team of reporters. Tom Murphy’s darkroom closed almost two decades ago. The photos on its pages now come from smartphones more often than not. Yet it has continued to follow the evolving fortunes of the Church locally through the first two decades of this century. As the new millennium began, the question of church closures resulted in the ‘Leaving Safe Harbours’ programme on pastoral provision. In 2001 the new Archdiocesan Centre for Evangelisation opened.

Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008 was reflected by a major conference of Bishops from Europe and Africa, held that November. In 2014, following the retirement of Archbishop Patrick Kelly, the installation of Archbishop Malcolm McMahon made him the fifth archbishop to serve the diocese in the Pic’s lifetime. There have been eight auxiliary bishops ordained within the same timeframe, most recently Bishop Thomas Neylon. The recent focus has been on the future with the Archdiocesan Synod and publishing of a new Pastoral Plan. As for the Pic’s future, those who hold it dear are optimistic. Kim O’Brien, who has helped steer its fortunes for 30 years, sees an enduring appetite among readers. ‘The need for local and community news has increased’ she says. ‘people want to know what’s going on in their own community.

‘I know from speaking to Catholic schools that they absolutely love being featured in the Catholic Pic. Head teachers often say to me, “I love picking it up at the back of church and finding our children in it and reading about our school”. They value belonging to that family of the Archdiocese.’

And it is not just schools. ‘Among Catholic families in Liverpool, there’ll be few that don’t know the Catholic Pic,’ adds Kim. ‘There’s something special about it, there’s a lot of history there. I still believe it has an important place and role and I hope in 10 years time it is still going strong. There is something to be proud of for

Meeting of European and African Bishops 2008

Liverpool’s Catholic community and the Archdiocese still having a printed publication in 2022.

Alan Birkett holds a similar hope. His involvement with the Pic stretches back 43 years and, as he jokes, he hopes he is ‘not the last man standing’. He concludes: ‘Hopefully, it is always there. It’s something that I think will always have a place in the Archdiocese. I think it has kept its ethos, it brings good news and that’s what people want to read.’

The original cover price of the Catholic Pictorial was 6d (sixpence or 2.5p), which – when adjusted to inflation – is around 47p in today’s money. It was just under half what a Pic reader would have paid on average for a loaf of white bread (11.5d) in 1962. This was a year when the average annual pay was £799 and the average house price £2,670.

In the first month of the Pic’s existence, an evening out in Liverpool could have involved seeing South Pacific at the Odeon or The Young Ones at the Liverpool Forum, or going dancing at the Locarno Ballroom in West Derby or ice-skating at the Silver Blades Ice Rink on Prescot Road.

That same month of January witnessed the release of the Beatles’ first recording, My Bonnie, though their first song to make an impact on the top 20 arrived in the autumn with Love Me Do. It was the year too of Marilyn Monroe’s death, the launch of the first commercial communications satellite, Telstar, and the release of the first Bond film, Dr No.

In the world of football, Brazil won the World Cup in Chile, Everton finished fourth in the First Division and Liverpool won promotion from the Second Division.

If you’ve got any news from your parish that you’d like featured e-mail us with the details at: catholicpictorial@rcaol.co.uk

Below: Bishop Paul Bayes and Archbishop Malcolm McMahon with Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Justin Welby at the SheppardWorlock memorial in Hope Street. Credit: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

Catholic and Anglican Bishops met in Liverpool for a two-day joint meeting that began on Tuesday 1 February with a Service of Midday Prayer in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King. The bishops then took part in a ‘Fraternal Pilgrimage Walk’ along Hope Street to Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral pausing at the Sheppard-Worlock memorial which commemorates the work of Archbishop Derek Worlock and his Anglican counterpart Bishop David Sheppard. The Bishops returned to the Metropolitan Cathedral for Mass at 7.00 am on Wednesday 2 February, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, before concluding their discussions and returning to their dioceses later in the day. The meeting was the first between the Catholic Bishops of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the Church of England House of Bishops since they gathered in Leicester back in January 2019.

As we reported last December the money raised by readers of the Catholic Pic for Gaza was transferred to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a few days before Christmas. He writes: ‘May the Lord grant you peace! ‘I acknowledge receipt of 11,670.00 NIS (£2,786.00) by bank transfer sent to the Latin Patriarchate for the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza to help with some of the repairs and other needs at the sisters discretion. Please thank Father Mark Madden for this recent appeal that he facilitated in Liverpool. We are grateful to you and the Friends of the Holy Land for your generosity and every initiative that you take to help the local Church in the Holy Land. Please be assured of our prayers for you, especially as we enter the most joyful and festive season of our Christian faith.’ Sincerely yours in Christ, + Pierbattista Pizzaballa Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

A further donation of £300 was added to the total shortly afterwards. Father Mark Madden writes, ‘Sr Nabila has contacted me to express her joy and thanks. Sadly, the Holy Land Co-ordination meeting has been postponed from January to the end of May as Israel has restricted foreign travellers entering the country. I’ll certainly miss my Gaza visit, but I know the contribution made by the archdiocese through the Catholic Pic will be greatly appreciated.’

by Neil Sayer Archdiocesan Archivist

March is Women’s History Month, a celebration of half of humankind’s contributions to culture and society that takes in International Women’s Day on 8 March. To commemorate it this year, we’re looking at the only church in the entire archdiocese that was designed by a woman. The baby-boom that followed the Second World War combined with a general relocation of the population to suburbs and countryside to create a need for new churches in the hinterlands of Lancashire. Lowton, a village between Wigan and Warrington, already had a chapel of ease, a building dedicated to St Catherine of Siena at the request of one of the donors of the land on which it stood, Mrs Catherine Sinar. When it became a parish in 1957, its first Parish Priest, Father John Connolly, came up with the idea for a new church that was a radical proposal. Some years before the Second Vatican Council began its sessions that led to changes in the layout of churches, Father Connolly’s idea of a polygonal church was ‘so that people can group themselves more intimately round the altar.’ Patricia Brown had graduated from the Liverpool University School of Architecture and, together with her husband David, was working for a local firm of architects. Weightman and Bullen had been undertaking surveying work for the archdiocese since the 1920s, and also designed many churches and schools. Pat Brown was appointed architect for the new church of St Catherine of Siena, and her interpretation of Father Connolly’s idea was groundbreaking, all the more remarkable as it was her first church design. As a student, she had absorbed the theories of modernism, and it seems she was allowed a fair amount of latitude in experimenting with new forms and methods of building. What she created was the first hexagonal church to be built in the archdiocese, the roof layout giving it the shape, it was said, of a cardinal’s hat. There were no columns to obscure the view of the sanctuary, the pews were raked for a similar purpose, and a notable feature was the tall, latticed tower, topped by a neon-lit copper cross intended to be visible for miles along the nearby East Lancashire Road. Press reports dubbed the finished church ‘ultra-modern’ and ‘futuristic’, and as its congregation would include scientists and other workers from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Risley, it was also described as ‘an atomic-age church’ when it opened in 1959. It isn’t clear whether it was Mrs Brown’s female insights that led her to include another ‘up-to-the-minute’ feature, a sound-proof room providing accommodation for about 20 mothers and babies. ‘Personally’, said Father Connolly, ‘I don’t mind the children wailing’, but priests at many subsequent churches also provided with a’“crying room’ may well have been grateful to have their words audible to all. Sadly, after 50 years the church became uneconomical for use by a dwindling congregation. By 2011 the projected cost for repairs had become too much for the archdiocese to support, and the parish was closed in the following year. A bid to put the church on the listed building register was unsuccessful. It was eventually demolished in 2017 and replaced by housing. Patricia Brown’s legacy is in the churches that followed her design, which turned out not to be ‘the last word in futurism’. Weightman and Bullen designed several more modernist churches for the archdiocese, including St Ambrose in Speke and St William of York in Thornton. (It was in fact to York that Pat Brown went with her husband to establish an outpost for the firm across the Pennines.) And Archbishop Heenan, shortly after he had opened the church in June 1959, led the team that chose Frederick Gibberd’s design for the new Cathedral of Christ the King that was built during the 1960s. Was Mrs Brown’s modernism an influence?

by M.C. Benitan Director of pastoral development

If you sing or play a musical instrument, the idea of accompaniment will not be new to you. You know that while someone performs the main melody, the accompanier supports it and provides the background. This helps the soloist fill the space with even more feeling. In short, this combination not only carries the music forward, but it also creates depth and interest. Undoubtedly, a sensitive collaboration between the soloist and the accompanier is vital: they must be on the same page at least metaphorically for the music to work. But the result is worth it because it has the power to open new dimensions and carry us beyond the bounds of a single melody.

There is also another way to break open the word ‘accompaniment’. If we look at how this word is formed, Eucharistic links are inevitable. In Latin panis means bread and com means together. Those of us who break bread together in the great Eucharistic mystery are, by definition, a com-pany: bread fellows or messmates. On the other hand, any time we share a meal (or time) with somebody, there is a vast potential for it to become a moment of accompaniment as well. The Eucharist is not replaced by these ordinary moments of companionship, but it serves as a blueprint to help us recognise Christ in our midst whenever two or three are gathered in his name (Mt 18:20).

Such seemingly ordinary moments of companionship can therefore happen anywhere: on a pilgrimage as much as at the bedside of a sick friend or relative, at a workplace as much as in a shopping centre. They fill our lives in chance encounters as well as through intentional moments where we go out of our way to be with somebody. In short, there is a vast scope for accompaniment inside and outside of the Church because it can happen through breaking and sharing the sustenance of our lives, which is our daily bread.

We often do it lovingly and without thinking, but we sometimes do it grudgingly and rather unhelpfully. No wonder the Pope calls this process an art (Evangelii Gaudium 169-70). It requires courage to keep trying, humility to accept errors and failures, patience to be able to learn from them, and wisdom and skill that comes only from experience. In short, a virtuoso of accompaniment will have spent many days practising and learning from any and every helpful source.

In the light of all this, there is no wonder that the Archdiocese of Liverpool decided to approach the first Synod recommendation on evangelisation through the lens of accompaniment. This may look like replacing one difficult four-syllable word with another, but perhaps there is more to it than a switch to a currently fashionable buzz word. The word evangelisation comes from Greek, where eu means good and angelion is a message. This goodness comes solely from God and the message is encapsulated in the living bread that is blessed, broken and shared. And as the Church teaches, thanks to our relationship with Christ, we are all together a sacramental sign and an instrument of union with God (Gaudium et Spes 42).

In short, the Church has always been an accompanier, going out of her way just like Christ to share the good news and the lifegiving bread especially with the poor, the dejected and the marginalised. Maybe now is the opportune time to reclaim this ancient practice with even more intentionality and scope. Imagine the beautiful symphony across our land if we got even better at accompaniment than we already are.

If you wish to find out more, share your experiences or pick up handy tips and tools, the Archdiocese is organising two identical in-person events on accompaniment with the Archbishop and the Proximity project. These will take place on 19th and 20th March at St Margaret Clitherow Centre (former LACE).

Come along with a friend and see what it can offer you and what you can share from your own knapsack of experiences. Food to accompany this journey will be provided too. (For more information and to sign up, please go to http://www.liverpoolcatholic.org.uk/side-by-side )

The Liverpool Irish Rovers running group taking part in the Cafod Walk against Hunger Walk against Hunger is a 200k 40-day Lent challenge championed by Cafod starting on Ash Wednesday, 2 March and running until Maundy Thursday,14 April. It’s a chance to do something practical to tackle hunger, by raising money to support food projects, as well campaigning work on investigating the food system policies and structures that leaves globally 810 million people going to bed hungry – that’s 1 in 9 people living with hunger or undernourished. Cover 200k any way you wish: 5k every day for 40 days, or in one go with a group, on your own, or as part of a team. Track your distance using Strava or any other step counting app – and add your distance to your Just Giving page each day. Once you’ve got your Just Giving fundraising page up and running, you need to spread the word to your family and friends and get sponsored, so that Cafod can help communities around the world have enough to eat and can give hunger its marching orders. Among those taking part from the archdiocese will be the Liverpool Irish Rovers running group, to join them and to sign up go to: walk.cafod.org.uk

by Kathy Riley St Vincent (our patron) and Blessed Frederic Ozanam (our founder) both realised the importance of organisation, kindness and of the little heart that says yes to service. We have an amazing team of members in our archdiocese, but the present need is huge. Thousands of hours of SVP voluntary work reach back to the1840s, when our first conference opened in Liverpool. We must celebrate this service and thank our current sisters and brothers. Visiting is the backbone of our work. Members visit people in hospital, care homes, and their own homes. Visits to vulnerable prisoners help them with basic necessities. We deliver goods to food banks, homeless shelters and families in need. Asylum seekers and refugees are given practical assistance, and we work alongside other organisations to help anyone in need. Food, fuel and friendship are provided where we can locally, but we also twin with a large number of conferences in India and Sudan. An annual holiday is organised for local children who greatly benefit from one. We visit people with mental health issues, the lonely, the dying, and all without judgement, irrespective of religion or lifestyle. We have a new university conference and active mini-vinnie groups in schools. Each conference works in its own way to alleviate need and build a more just society, based on Gospel values. The future of the SVP depends on how present and future members respond to needs around them in the Archdiocese and beyond. The society was founded for the alleviation of poverty, and modern poverty takes many forms: isolation, mental health issues, addiction in various ways, lack of basic human needs. In our meetings, we pray that we will ‘never pass by anyone who is in need or in distress’ and that pledge may be realised in various ways. Elsewhere, the SVP run advice centres, hostels and cafes/shops. Our aim is to seek what is the best way forward in the archdoicese. It would be an ultimate aim to have an active SVP conference in every parish, giving service to its locality and establishing what our founder called a ‘network of charity’ across the world. Most people who become members say they wish they had joined earlier, and the work brings with it personal spiritual development and an assurance that every act of charity brings the Kingdom a little closer. The St Vincent de Paul Society in England and Wales is a registered charity, complying with all the Charity Commission’s legal requirements. We have 10,000 members providing 800,000 visits across the UK, but recruitment for membership is needed in our archdiocese. To enquire about the SVP, contact Kathy Riley, Membership Support Officer for Liverpool and South West Lancs. at kathyr@svp.co.uk Tel 07917 303155.