This book presents a selection of the best of the weekly
‘Pastor Iuventus’ columns from The Catholic Herald.
Arranged over a year, the columns give us a true-life
picture of the ministry of a parish priest in a busy city. The diary
convincingly conveys the tangible and day-to-day reality of a
priest’s life and work. The journal is about the endless fascinations
of parish life: the highs and lows, births and deaths, new
challenges, and, amongst all these, the quiet presence of God.
The author tells it as it is, with candour and insight, but also with
humour and brilliance. Through the everyday life of the parish,
the local hospital and the school, we are given an intimate
portrayal of real life. The reader will be moved and inspired by the
beauty and depth of these weekly columns. As the year unfolds,
the journal reminds us of the closeness of the Providence of God
to every human life.
As Dr William Oddie says in the Foreword to the first edition,
Father Allain’s diary column provides readers with an often vivid
inside track on the spiritual life of a parish priest, in a way which
certainly conveys its pressures and difficulties, but which also
nurtures the spiritual imagination of its readers by demonstrating
that those pressures and difficulties can always - with a simple
and basic faith in the realities of a working Catholic spirituality -
be withstood and transcended.
Fr Dominic Allain was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of
Southwark. Now the International Pastoral Director for ‘Grief to
Grace’ - a programme which brings spiritual and psychological healing
to survivors of sexual and other abuse (www.grieftograceuk.org), he
also works as a retreat giver and spiritual director. This book draws on
his experiences as a parish priest and hospital chaplain in the London
area. He is well-known to many through his weekly columns, ‘Pastor
Iuventus’, in The Catholic Herald.
