by vf-editor | 2020/06/30 | English, News, Stories
In 2015, I had the chance to spend Easter with a Vincentian youth group in the community of Palmas del Río, in El Roble parish, Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Each day we would walk twenty to thirty minutes from the church hall into the village, and from there, we would...
by vf-editor | 2020/05/27 | English, News, Stories
A diary reveals much about its writer; especially read in retrospect some time later. It’s not your diary I am thinking of – it’s mine! The hand-eye-brain co-ordination creates a muscular memory of events that is both cathartic and illuminating. A strong...
by vf-editor | 2020/04/22 | English, News, Stories
August 18th 2003 I was running between two emergencies. We were Red Cross volunteer lifeguards. We first attended to a man with a stab wound and took him to hospital, but it was a struggle to get him admitted: we knew neither his name, nor of any relatives who could...
by vf-editor | 2020/03/18 | English, News, Stories
I knew him as Rocco, his nickname. Every week, we’d chat. His ‘patch’ was outside Sainsbury’s, the main supermarket in Cambridge. He sat unimposing, legs crossed, greying beard. He always wore a woollen hat, even when the sun was shining. Rocco was up early and stayed...
by vf-editor | 2020/01/22 | English, News, Stories
And suddenly I felt her little hand in mine. She had stood next to me for a while; staring up at me with her curious eyes; her bright smile framed by dusty, tangled hair. We were in the middle of a small square; surrounded by little houses; a buzzing community on the...
by vf-editor | 2020/01/09 | English, News, Stories
At the heart of community life. With an ever present calling. To be close to the people and to be open to the needs of the time is the common thread running through the history of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of St Vincent de Paul in Untermarchtal. For...
