St. Luke's & Holy Cross Parish

Father Paul's Band, Sanctuary Rig, has produced their first single, called "Sail On". It contains 4 songs and it is £5. It is available for purchase here. Visit their web site, www.sanctuaryrig.co.uk.

SANCTUARY RIG PLAYS LIVE ON FRIDAY 13TH JANUARY 2006 9.00PM AT HOLY CROSS HALL IN AID OF ASIAN EARTHQUAKE APPEAL & BUILDING FUND. TICKETS £5 FROM PARISH AND SCHOOLS.

Interior of Holy Cross church St. Luke's and Holy Cross parish is one of the 6 parishes in West Essex Deanery and part of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brentwood. The parish history began since about 1959 with Sunday masses in Potter Street. The Holy Cross church was built in 1963 and St. Luke's church in 1966 (shared with Church of England and Methodist). The Parish Priest is Father Paul McNamara, since 1997.

The parish has 7 areas, each with one or two Pastoral Assistants. The Catholic population was estimated about 3500 in 2003, average mass attendance of about 468, with 4 marriages and 29 baptism a year*.

Greetings from Father Paul

Fr. Paul McNamara Dear friends, I warmly welcome you to our Parish web site, which I hope you will find both informative and interesting. It has been a long while in the pipeline, and was first mooted as a solution to the many requests from school children undertaking projects on the parish.
I am sure it will be of great benefit to a much wider group of people and I wish to thank all who have been involved in it’s preparation.
This web site is by no means a replacement for personal contact between priest and people but a new and additional way of communicating in our our modern world. I hope it is of use to you. If there is anything you would like to see on this site, then please do let us know.

With every good wish,

Father Paul McNamara

Site Organisation

The site is organised into 7 sections shown on the menu bar. When you click on the menu bar, the left navigation shows the sub menus for that section.

About the parish section describes the parish history, churches, staff, council, areas, twin parish and other parishes in Harlow. The Sacraments section contains the mass times, baptism, first communion, confirmation, reconciliation (penance), wedding (holy matrimony), funeral, communion for the sick and hospital chaplancy.

Ministries section explains the altar servers, ministry of readers, eucharistic ministers, choir and usher. Activities tells about altar servers, senior citizen, stewardship, event calendar, knights of St. Columba, legion of Mary and gift aid.

Schools describes the 3 Catholic schools in the Parish. Links contains related web sites within Diocese of Brentwood, Vatican and Catholic news. Contact us explains how to contact the parish via post, telephone or email including maps and directions.

*Source: Brentwood Diocesan Directory 2005.