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News from our sister churches Beginning
this September the Danish Church on the Cote d’Azur will be moving its
monthly Sunday service at St Michael’s from 11.15am in the morning to
3.00pm in the afternoon and having a monthly Sunday morning service at St
George’s, Cannes. This new pattern will be tried out on an experimental
basis for a year and then, if it proves satisfactory, made permanent. This
decision has clear advantages for us; no longer will we have to make
strenuous efforts to begin our own service on the dot of 10.00am (when
quite a few of our congregation have not yet arrived!) and to finish 3 or
4 minutes before 11.00am; no longer will we have those 15 minutes of
controlled chaos before 11.15am, when we are clearing up after our service
and the Danes are getting ready for theirs – 15 minutes of good humour
on both sides but hardly the occasion for leisurely conversation. Of
course, there is a debit side; no longer will members of our congregation
be able to look forward to a really brief sermon once a month! If this new pattern is in fact confirmed next year,
the Church Council of St Michael’s will need to address the question of
the hour of our own Sunday Eucharist; should it continue at 10.00am or
should it be moved to 10.30am? We
need to know your views. On
the evening of the last Sunday in August our good friend father Jean-Marie
Tschann celebrated his last mass as Curé
in the Church of the Sacré
Coeur. After ten years in Beaulieu, first of all as Curé of
Beaulieu and finally of the newly constituted parish of Notre-Dame de
l’Espérance,
comprising Beaulieu, St Jean-Cap Ferrat, Villefranche and Eze, the Bishop
of Nice has aked him to move to Nice as Curé
of Vieux Nice with responsibility for all the churches except the
Cathedral in that quarter. Our
previous issue contained an interview with Père
Tschann conducted by Josephine Attar; I would like to add my own tribute
of appreciation for his faithful ministry, his personal friendship and his
ecumenical commitment. It was an honour to sit in the sanctuary at that
farewell mass and to be included in the clerical dinner party which
concluded the evening. It is good to know too that he plans to be at my
Jubilee celebrations in Chichester. His successor is well known to us: Père
Jean-Paul Filippi has been in the parish for some time, resident at
St-Jean, and we have appreciated his fine voice and great musical ability
at a number of ecumenical services. We assure him of our prayers and good
wishes as he takes over as Curc
of the Parish of Notre-Dame de l’Espérance.
R.T.G. |
