Monday 21 September 2009

One week to go

It's just one week until the relics of St Thérèse arrive in Lancaster, and a busy week of preparations is ahead of us. After nearly 18 months of planning, these final few days will be taken up with ironing out some last-minute details, moving a lot of furniture and - if recent experience is anything to go by - answering a lot of telephone calls about the visit. Over the weekend the relics have been in Birmingham, where over 10,000 people went on pilgrimage to the Cathedral Church of St Chad.

Most of the early venues on the tour (the relics have already been to Portsmouth, Plymouth, Taunton and Birmingham) are reporting larger than expected numbers of pilgrims, and everywhere it seems to have been a great event. This morning the reliquary is being taken to the church of the Sacred Heart and St Teresa in Coleshill, just outside of Birmingham, before heading to Cardiff, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester; the relics then arrive here on the afternoon of Monday 28th. The pictures in this post are courtesy of www.catholicrelics.co.uk, which has a blog following the tour. Our own St Thérèse in Lancaster blog is also keeping a regular eye on events around the country as well as our preparations. You can find it here.