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 The season of Lent lasts for the six-and-a-half weeks before Easter when Christians prepare to remember Jesus Christ’s suffering and death; and to celebrate his Resurrection, his raising to life from the dead. There is a proverb which says ‘no matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back’.
With Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, we can seek to ‘turn back’ to Christ, to God who loves us more than we can imagine.
In our Lent section we have more information on the season, daily mp3 downloads where we relate the day's Gospel readings to movies, Lent resources and much more.  Click here .
Every five years, our Diocesan Bishops make an ad Limina visit to Rome to meet with the Holy Father to discuss their diocesan ministry and to make a pilgrimage to the threshold of the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul.
There are three important parts to the ad Limina:
- The pilgrimage to, and veneration of, the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul
- A personal meeting with the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI
- Meeting and conversations with the various departments of the Roman Curia (the administrative offices of the Holy See)
The bishops are in Rome from 24 January until 4 February 2010. Click for more
Pope Benedict XVI has called the whole Church to celebrate a Year for Priests beginning on 19th June 2009, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
His purpose for this year is to encourage priests in their “striving for spiritual perfection on which, above all, the effectiveness of their ministry depends” and to highlight “the importance of the priest’s role and mission in the Church and in contemporary society”.
To do this the Holy Father calls us to a renewed focus on the centrality of Christ in our lives and in the Church and that “brings with it the correct appreciation of the ministerial priesthood, without which there would be neither the Eucharist, nor even the mission nor the Church herself”. Click for more
The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman was an Anglican received into the Catholic Church in 1845.
He was made a Cardinal in 1879. The cause for his beatification is currently being considered. He was declared a Venerable by the late Pope John Paul II in 1991 after the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints decreed that he exercised all of the Christian virtues in a heroic degree.

Click here for a full Biography of Cardinal Newman.
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 The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about his forthcoming Apostolic Visit to Great Britain in his address to the Bishops of England and Wales on the occasion of their ad Limina visit to Rome. This General Audience took place on the morning of Monday 1 February 2010.
The Apostolic Visit is taking place in response to an invitation extended by the State. Full details are yet to be confirmed.
The Holy Father said:  “Even amid the pressures of a secular age, there are many signs of living faith and devotion among the Catholics of England and Wales. I am thinking for example of the enthusiasm generated by the visit of the relics of St Thérèse, the interest aroused by the prospect of Cardinal Newman’s beatification and the eagerness of young people to take part in pilgrimages and World Youth Days.
"On the occasion of my forthcoming Apostolic Visit to Great Britain, I shall be able to witness that faith for myself and as Successor of Peter, to strengthen and confirm it.
"During the months of preparation that lie ahead, be sure to encourage the Catholics of England and Wales in their devotion and assure them that the Pope constantly remembers them in his prayers and holds them in his heart."  
Follow the visit at: http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/