Our Rainbow Nation Parish

Rainbow Nations is how Nelson Mandela described his ideal South Africa. A place where people of different backgrounds, cultures and experiences could live together in peace and harmony. Well, it can also be used to describe English Martyrs parish!

On Peace Sunday this year we started a simple mapping exercise to discover how many nationalities were represented in our parish and it has produced exciting results. The maps (one large World Map, one of the UK and one of Africa) were displayed for several weeks to give people plenty of opportunity to take a good look and then place their ‘pin’ in their home country. Almost 300 individuals and families placed their pin in a map, arousing interest and conversation at the back of the church after Sunday Mass. At the last count we have 48 countries represented in the parish…. spanning most of the alphabet, from Barbados, Ireland, Malaysia to Zimbabwe. The countries that reflect the largest numbers of people are Nigeria, Ireland, England and Sierra Leone. Maybe we should get some football teams together and have our own World Cup? What a great sign of unity, cooperation and respect that we can all claim to be part of one community and one family – the family of English Martyrs, Walworth.

Following on from the mapping we then invited people to write the word PEACE in their mother-tongue. Did you now that in Irish this is Siochán and in Ghanaian, Asamu Dwea? These too have now been placed around the map, which becomes more colourful by the week. If your mother tongue is not represented then please feel free to add it.

What more might we do to celebrate this unity and respect? A one world parish picnic, day or evening where we share food, stories, music from our different traditions? A special Mass at Pentecost where were readings and intercession prayers are offered in different languages (and translated of course)? An evening where we all tell the ‘story’ of what brought us to Walworth? A contest for the young people in our parish to produce a power- point of the story of the people of English Martyrs parish? You probably have many better ideas which could be shared – so please let us know!

Pat Gaffney