During the Second World War nearly one third of the world’s merchant shipping was British, including sailors from all over the British Empire. Over 30,000 men from the British Merchant Navy died

Twice a year, in May and November, the Merchant Navy Association of Wales organises a Memorial Service on the steps of the Senedd in Cardiff Bay.

This year’s May gathering is on Saturday May 25th at 11am.

The cost of war

During the Second World War nearly one third of the world’s merchant shipping was British, and over 30,000 men from the British Merchant Navy died. More than 2,400 British ships were sunk.

The ships were crewed by sailors from all over the British Empire including India and China, the West Indies, Middle East and Africa.

On May 25, members of the Merchant Navy Association will be joined by politicians and serving officers of the Merchant and Royal Navy, sea cadets and many friends and families, with singing accompanied by Symphonic Brass Cardiff.

Embracing diversity

The service is led by Fr Dean Atkins, who is often accompanied by representatives of other faiths. This year, the Order of Service has been slightly changed with words written by Fr Dean to make it more welcoming and inclusive of people of different faiths.

“As we rejoice in our shared humanity, we recognize and celebrate that we are part of a diverse community built on respect and welcome.  Together, we stand, as we recall the cost of war and conflict to people’s lives, to the world.” (Words of Introduction, MNA Memorial Service, May 2024)

And in the Commitment to peace at the end of the gathering, we will be asked, “Will you find within your own faith, words of peace to speak to others, and so create a world built upon true friendship?

The voice of young people will also be heard as a representative of the Sea Cadets asks, “Will you listen to the voice of children and young people who deserve a safe and peaceful world?” and “Will you listen to me as I ask you to do all you can to build friendships and bring hope, so that I and my friends, and every child in the world can build on your good work?”

At the heart of the gathering is the Act of Remembrance with the Last Post, two minutes’ silence and the laying of wreaths.

Seated in front of the Senedd we not only look out to sea but also across the nearby Memorial (above) remembering “Merchant seafarers from the ports of Barry, Penarth and Cardiff who died in times of war.” It is a beautifully crafted piece of work by Brian Fell.

The Memorial Service, taking place on the steps of the Senedd, is an open air service and many people who happen to be enjoying Cardiff Bay often stop and participate. Why not come along?

For more information about the Merchant Navy Association (Wales) check out their website

The scene is set. A church becomes the backdrop of some TV drama. A character appears from the shadows. They are surrounded by a staggering number of candles burning brightly on a variety of chandeliers imported for the occasion. Hundreds of people have obviously passed through the church doors that day. The votive stands are ablaze.

We light candles in churches, of course, although not in the number or ways portrayed by film sets. Our liturgical space is far more subtly lit. We don’t need to import a gothic atmosphere or create an air of suspense.

For some weeks now, though, one candle in particular has had a special pride of place in our churches, remaining lit throughout the fifty days of Easter. It stands alone, a pillar of light.

The Paschal Candle was blessed and lit as we gathered in darkness for the Easter Vigil. “Let it mingle with the lights of heaven” go the words of the Easter Proclamation sung by the deacon or priest.

A change of scenery

But, a change of scenery will come in the coming weeks. At the end of Pentecost Sunday (May 19) the Candle is extinguished and moved to the Font, setting the scene for the rest of the year.

The candle will be relit for two different kinds of occasions of birth and death.

When we celebrate the birth of Baptism during the year, the candle will provide the light for the Baptismal Candle cradled in the hands of the newly baptised. “Receive the light of Christ,” they are told. “Walk in the light and keep the flame of faith alive in your hearts.”

Placing the candle at the font does not necessarily wrap up Easter, although it does mark the end of those great fifty days. “We are an Easter people and Alleuia is our song!”’proclaimed St Augustine.

Every Sunday is a little Easter. And every baptism is a dying and rising with Christ, a sharing in the Mystery celebrated at Easter.

At funerals, the scene changes again, and the candle is placed near the coffin, a subtle sign that we share in Christ’s risen life. “You are made to live with God for ever,” said St John Paul II to a large gathering of young people in Milan. That is our hope. That is our destiny.

The Paschal Candle nudges us in our grief to see beyond the pain of death to the promise of eternal life.

Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost Sunday celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus. As Mary, the Apostles and others waited in prayer, they had obeyed the command of Jesus to “stay in the city” and wait for the Promise from on High.

Now, filled with the Spirit, their world is shaken, their hearts are moved. Transformed, they are stirred into action, confident to move beyond the confines of that first-floor room into the street and then further afield, far and wide.

The scene is set for us to follow in their footsteps, to emerge from the shadows into the light of day, to “walk in the light and keep the flame of faith alive in our hearts that when the Lord comes we may be ready to greet him.”

We celebrate Pentecost on Sunday 19 May with Mass at the usual times in the morning. In the evening, we have our celebration for young people, OMG! at 6pm which includes a time of worship followed by pizza. Find out more here:

The Church’s ministry is varied, and reaches out to all generations including those who are elderly.  Each month, we enjoy a visit to Bella Vista Nursing Home in Cardiff Bay for a short time of worship with some of the residents.

“You’ve got a nice face,” she said.  She repeated it a few times.  Perhaps she said it to everyone, or maybe just seeing a different face made her happy.  Possibly, she felt comfortable when people smiled, or a nice face is simply a face that smiles.

Whatever the reason, when she said it, she smiled too.  It made her happy and, in that moment, she also had, to use her own words, a nice face.

I didn’t notice her singing today, although I know she enjoys singing. At some point in her long life, she had been a professional singer, and often raises her voice in song.  But not today. Today, she just smiled.

I’m in Bella Vista Nursing Home in the south of Butetown, a Dementia friendly, purpose built home surrounded by houses in tight streets, close to the sea and looking across Cardiff Bay.  There are 62 en-suite bedrooms here, three dining rooms, and lots of facilities and activities.

Many of these activities are orchestrated by Abi, the Activities Coordinator.  There is Wheelchair Zumba and meals out, knitting and gardening, bingo and board games, pet therapy, and arts and crafts.  Slotted into this rich menu is the monthly ‘Church Service.’  Today, about a dozen have gathered, although we’re missing a few familiar faces. Often, like today, the visit of a family member or friend coincides with the Service.

We’re in one of the six lounges, upstairs on the second floor, with its large flat screen TV on the wall for which I’m grateful.  It means we can share clips of BBC’s Songs of Praise, which gives us a congregational boost and, most importantly, not have to rely on my own ‘out of pitch’ attempts to sing.

It’s the songs and the music which connect with many of them.  Each participates in their own way, some louder than others, some simply mouthing the words, and most not needing the subtitled words to be able to sing along.  They remember the words when perhaps other things evade them.  The tunes connect with them, stir a memory, move them to pray.  Some just sit, are silent, and connect in their own way.

We are blessed in our churches with people of all ages, each as important as the other. Some have been constant features for every decade of their life, their faithfulness an inspiration to those of us who are yet to catch up, their experience a rich wellspring of stories, some going back a hundred years.

Today, four hymns are drawn from the archives of our faith.  Blessed Assurance and Amazing Grace, The Lord’s my Shepherd and Cwm Rhondda.  Sometimes I ask for suggestions, and we flick through Youtube trying to find what they want to sing.

Familiar prayers are shared.  The ‘Our Father,’ ‘Make me a channel of your peace’ and ‘God be in my head and in my understanding,’ They are prayers I remember from my own Sunday School days, and I sometimes forget that I know them by heart.

Tea and biscuits follow before I’m guided to the room of someone who didn’t quite feel up to joining us today. I show him the Blessed Sacrament. He holds out his hand.

“The Body of Christ.”

“Amen,” he replies, and then he tells me he’s looking forward to next month, will join us next time we gather on the second floor.

I smile, he smiles. 

He’s got a nice face.

The Great Get Together is the UK’s annual celebration of everything that unites our communities

Behind the Get Together is the Jo Cox Foundation which makes meaningful change on issues that the late Jo Cox MP was passionate about. She believed that we have more in common than that which divides us.

With a belief that a kinder, fairer and more connected world is possible, they work to make change, following Jo’s example of collaborating with others and bringing people together to achieve more than we can alone.

The need to celebrate unity and reject division is as relevant now as it was eight years ago. And so this June, on what would have been Jo’s 50th Birthday, many people and organisations will be organising events to bring communities together.

South Cardiff Ministry Area has been involved in the Great Get Together for several years, and this year is no different.

After the Great Winter Get Together in January we’re looking forward to sunnier times.

We’ll be hosting the Great Get Together Barbecue in Butetown at St Mary’s Church on Sunday June 23rd at 12 noon.

There’ll be vegetarian, vegan and halal options alongside the usual barbecue favourites.

We’re also looking forward to hearing the plans from our two church schools who have also been involved for several years.

The Great Get Together weekend falls beautifully into the end of Refugee Week for which we also have some great plans – but more of that will be revealed soon!

You can find out more about the Great Get Together, organise your own events, and find out what else is happening near you on the Jo Cox Foundation website: https://www.jocoxfoundation.org/our-work/stronger-communities/great-get-together/

Why not get involved?!

Our Church Schools are amazing communities of children, staff and families, a place where we make connections and try to understand each other better. Here’s a reflection on our experience of prayer and worship with children in school

I wait in St Mary’s School Hall for the children to arrive.  I twiddle my fingers and thumbs, turn the ring around my finger, a gift from my mother many years ago.  It’s a habit I’ve noticed myself doing, as I turn it round and round in circles.

Some of the Year 6 pupils who have been helping to prepare the space for Collective Worship, and place chairs for the staff and their own classmates, stop to look at the visual aids I’ve brought in.  Rosary Beads of different shapes and sizes, a Jesus Rope with its tied knots, and some Muslim Prayer Beads.

They explore them, decide to order them in size.  One of the children is Sikh.  I ask him about prayer beads in the Sikh faith, but he doesn’t seem to know about them, but he is keen to show me the jewellery they wear, lifts the sleeve of his jumper to show me the bangle, the Kara, a sign of unbreakable attachment and commitment to God.

Slowly, the hall begins to fill up with lines of children escorted by staff and calming music. Most of the children sat in front of me now are Muslim, over 80 per cent.  There are Hindus too, and I see a few members of the church congregation, all recently baptized at Easter.  They smile.

It’s Monday afternoon, and I lead worship here from time to time through the term.  Over the river in St Paul’s Primary School, I also lead collective worship each week, as well as Mass with a different class each time before I scurry back to Butetown for Mass with some of the children of St Mary’s where the arrangement is slightly different. It’s the same children each week, whilst the Muslim children remain in school for their own focussed time together.

At St Paul’s, we’ve also been able to celebrate Masses with the whole school present or explored the Stations of the Cross together in classes back in Holy Week.  Different things are possible.

Each school is distinctive in its life of prayer and worship, in its religious expression and Christian identity.  Both schools embrace and respect the faith of all its pupils within a Christian environment, do it in their own unique way.  They have their own pattern of prayer, adopt their own unique school prayer.

“One day, some years ago, I had a large glass cookie jar,” I tell the children in front of me.  “There weren’t any cookies in it.  I like cookies, so they didn’t last long.  But I used the jar to collect my loose change.  Ones and twos, lots of coppers and a few silver pieces too.  Every day, my loose change was dropped into the cookie jar.  I didn’t pay much attention to it.

And then, one day, my mother paid a visit, told me I should count it.  I said, “If you count it, you can keep it.”  I returned home later that day.  She was surrounded by neat stacks of coins.   “£450 pounds,” she exclaimed.  Sometimes, we don’t realise how much or what we have until we count it!”

In his book, ‘Supercommunicators,’ Charles Duhigg talks of “an essential truth: to communicate with someone we must connect with them.  When we absorb what someone is saying and they comprehend what we say it’s because our brains have, to some degree, aligned.  When we start thinking alike, we understand each other better.”

I show them the rosary beads, tell them that counting prayers with beads is common to many different religions, that the old English words ‘bede’ actually means ‘a prayer.’

We compare the beads, different shapes and sizes and materials.  I show them the Muslim prayer beads.  “How many of you have some of these?” I ask.  Many raise their hands. I tell them a Muslim friend gave me these. 

We have connected.

That’s what we do.  We make connections, find the common ground which we can inhabit, discover some shared thing so that we can move on together.  Carve out a space of openness where we can learn from one another, communicate with one another, explore the world together, discover new possibilities, understand each other better.

I’m not an ardent adherent to the law when it comes to Collective worship in State schools.  It’s not a hill I will die on.  I don’t mind that many people think the law is outdated, non-representative, exclusive, and want it changed.  I don’t think that we as Christians can expect State schools to do our work for us, expect teachers who have no faith to teach children how to pray in our faith.  But if that’s your hill, I’m happy for you to keep fighting for it.

But here I am, in a Voluntary Aided Faith School of the Church in Wales, with a distinct Christian character embracing a diverse group of children, and staff too.

And so we try to make connections.

On Wednesday mornings we celebrate our School Masses. In St Paul’s Church there will be children from all the different faiths there.  Each child will be involved in their own way.  Some will sit towards the front and participate more openly, some will receive Holy Communion, others will read or lead the prayers.  Others will sit further back, be given the space to sit comfortably with their own identity and to grow up with what brings them meaning.

When I speak, I try to find those moments of connection, a means of beginning to understand one another, acknowledge our differences, and not make assumptions about their own experience of prayer and spirituality, their own faith and religious identity.

Last week at St Paul’s it was all about wasted gifts and talents.  I told them how I wasted one of my talents when I was younger.  I gave up running, racing, sprinting. I hold the unlit candle which they presented at the beginning of Mass, the symbol for that week’s celebration.  “What’s the point of a candle if you don’t light it? What’s the point of our gifts if we don’t use them?”  I talk about Jesus.  I can do this now – we have made connections.

Meanwhile, back in St Mary’s School Hall, we turn to our hands, count our fingers.  What things can we count? What if we counted our blessings? Would we have enough fingers and thumbs?

They share some of their blessings, from shared toys to food, from being loved to going to school, from bed time to play time. We begin to run out of fingers.

“Are we allowed one of those?” asks the Sikh lad pointing to the rosary before he leaves.

“Oh, that’s not for me to decide unfortunately,” I say.  “That’s a conversation to have with your family.”

He smiles, is content with that.

I recall a conversation with him on a long journey to London last year on a School Trip.  He told me about his hair, hidden away beneath his dastar, how long it was, why he didn’t cut it.  “It belongs to God,’ he said.  I could connect with that.  We understood each other better then.

By the way, my mother insisted that she didn’t want that stack of coins.  She bagged them up, ready for me to take to the Bank.  It was another day, like today, when I could have done with a few more fingers to count my blessings or maybe pick up the beads and just go round in circles.

We often get asked about the collection of Cargo homes at the top of Bute Street. Originally designed as temporary accommodation for families in housing need, they never fulfilled that aim.

Instead, from 2020, they provided accommodation for those in homeless provisions who had tested positive for Covid during the pandemic time, and then as emergency overnight accommodation.

The site allowed the Local Authority to have a safe space to house people with Covid to try to prevent the spread of the virus amongst their provisions and keep more people safe. In the end, they managed to make 377 placements to 293 people.

Now, over four years later they are returning to their original aimed purpose.

They currently stand empty whilst awaiting a refurbishment to bring them up to standard. Then the homes will be transferred into the Council’s Homeless Leasing Service (HLS) scheme which provides Temporary Accommodation within the community.

Welcome gifts

When the facility was due to welcome families over four years ago, members of the congregation at St Mary’s generously donated welcoming gifts although the gifts eventually made their way to service users of Ty Gobaith in their supported living projects they support.

Over the next few months, working with children of St Mary’s School and their Sanctuary Committee, and with funding from St Mary’s Church and items bought by members of the congregation, the children will help to package and present the parcels in readiness for when the first families arrive.

We are particularly concentrating on domestic items such as washing up liquid and kitchen cleaner, cloths, dusters and tea towels, fabric detergent and toilet cleaners as well as a few personal items such as deodorant, shower gels and toothpaste, along with coffee and tea.

Get in touch if you’d like to donate or simply sign up and pledge using the list in St Mary’s

We pray the rosary each Saturday at St Mary’s. As we approach Mary’s month of May we explore what it is and how we pray the rosary.

Split beads, snapped cords and chains litter my desk drawer. It’s like a rosary graveyard, the casualties of prayer. I must be too heavy handed when perhaps what is called for is a lighter touch.

So many of us find prayer so difficult that we write it off altogether, or perhaps we just make too big a deal of it, try too hard or think that prayer demands what we just can’t give. And so we fumble around, all fingers and thumbs, snapping cords and splitting beads.

The English word ‘bead’ derives from the old English noun bede which means a prayer. So every bead’s a prayer, a bidding.

The use of beads to bid is a common prayerful practice of many religions. Hinduism and Sikhism, Buddhism and Islam, Shinto, Umbanda, Bahai. All have some way of counting out prayers on beads, making us all fingers and thumbs.

The word “rosary” means a crown or garland of roses. An enclosed garden of flowers, perfect, scented, safe. A place of petals, protected by thorns. We’re so easily split and broken. We bleed in beauty’s grip, a rose between the thorns.

The Rosary’s precursor, a knotted rope held in the hands of the Desert Fathers to count out the ‘Jesus Prayer’ or the Psalms of David, existed in the early centuries of the Church. Today, the tied rope remains a favourite of Eastern Orthodox Christians. So simple, accessible, subtle.

Whilst rosary devotions deepened with St Dominic’s vision of Our Lady in 1214, some form of the prayer was known as distantly as the ninth century, as Christians counted out their Ave Marias, time and time again.

With beads in hand, they prayed the Scriptural greeting of Gabriel, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,” and Elizabeth’s exclamation in her hill country home, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

By the fifteenth century, Scriptural sentences were an established part of the beads, the biddings, and these became fashioned into fifteen Mysteries of Faith, joyful, sorrowful, glorious, relating the story of Jesus as the Bible tells it so. They were generally unchanged until 2002 when five more Mysteries of Light were introduced by St John Paul II.

The prayers, the beads, the biddings, each rose of the garland become a means of meditating on the life of Jesus. We are drawn deeper to him through the prayer and life of Mary his mother. She is the one who first received him, welcomed him into her life. She is attentive to him, dotes on him, becomes a walking treasure trove of love as she stores up the memories of him in her heart. She meditates on the mysteries as they happen.

She wants us to listen to him, and do whatever he tells us, just as she did in that first Mystery when Gabriel touched and changed her life.

As we thread the beads between our fingers, the repeated prayers still our mind, become as natural as breathing, as we find a momentum of prayer that isn’t heavy handed but relies on the lightness of touch which comes from a mother’s love. Time to breathe. Inhale the scent. Rest in her arms.

The Rosary prayer is like the picking of a lover’s petals. “He loves me, he loves me not” except the litany here is always “He loves me, he loves me, he loves me…” A place of petals protected by thorns, the story of our Salvation comes at a cost, but sorrow’s story turns to light and the glory of what is to come.

Yes, when we pray the rosary, we are all fingers and thumbs but succumb, like Mary, to the love of her son.

We pray the rosary at St Mary’s Church each Saturday morning just after 11am and before the 1130am Mass

The prayers of the rosary

The garland of beads is arranged in five distinct groups so that each of the Mysteries can be prayed in turn.

But before we set off, there are introductory prayers. We make the sign of the cross “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and continue with the Apostles Creed.

We recite the Lord’s Prayer, followed by three Hail Marys, and all wrapped up with “Glory be to the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And then, in turn, we pray our way through the petals of love which are the Mysteries of the Rosary. Each mysrery begun with the Lord’s prayer, continuing ten Hail Mary’s and Glory be.

Introductory Prayers

+ In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the 
power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
He will come again
to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen. 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen. 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.  

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen. 

The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38)
The Visitation (Luke 1:39-56)
The Birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-9)
Presentation of the Lord (Luke 2:22-39)
The Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51) 
 
The Mysteries of Light
The Baptism of Jesus (Mat 3:1-17) 
Jesus at the Wedding in Cana (John 2:1-12)
Proclamation of the Kingdom (Mk 1:15)
The Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36)
Institution of the Eucharist (Mat 26ff) 
 
The Sorrowful Mysteries
The Agony in the Garden (Luke 22:39-46)
The Scourging (Matthew 27:26) 
Crowning with Thorns (Mat 27:29-30)
Jesus carries his cross (Luke 23:26-32)
The Crucifixion (Luke 23:33) 
 
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrection (Luke 24:1-8)
The Ascension (Luke 24:50-53)
The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1ff)
The Assumption (Revelation 3:21)
The Crowning of Mary (Rev 2:10/12:1) 

Concluding Prayers:

Salve Regina
Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy;
Hail, our life, our sweetness
and our hope;
to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping
in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy towards us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement! O loving!
O sweet Virgin Mary! 
 
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,
that we may be made worthy
of the promises of Christ. 
 
O God, whose only-begotten Son, 
by His life, death and resurrection,
has purchased for us the  rewards of eternal life;
grant, we beseech thee, that,
meditating upon these mysteries
of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
we may imitate what they contain
and obtain what they promise,
through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Spend any time on our website, and you’ll know that our life together as a Ministry Area has three important areas. We aim to be a creative and resourceful community which is Welcoming, Faithful and Just.

With limited resources, we often work beyond our perceived capacity, and so much of what we are able to do is about being creative and resourceful with what we have.

Even before the Ministry Area was formed in January 2022, the four churches of St Mary’s, St Saviour’s, Ss Dyfrig and Samson, and St Paul’s were working together to plan for the future but since then we also work to a common vision around those important areas of being Welcoming, Faithful and Just.

You can read our Vision Document below. We’ve already achieved so much but we want to continue and embed the ministry and work we are doing, so that we become and remain a strong and cohesive community of faith working across Butetown, Grangetown and Splott.

Our Vision

We are

a community of communities, crossing bridges, bridging boundaries, reaching out in friendship to make a difference.

We have

a strong identity as Christians in the catholic tradition of the Church in Wales but we also love and embrace difference and diversity.  There is so much to learn from each other, and we respect and value the journey others are making.

We are

part of the fabric of Butetown, Grangetown and Splott in South Cardiff Ministry Area and love to  work in partnership with others to create strong and vibrant communities.

We have much to share with others, helping to enrich the diversity and growth of the wider church and community, releasing our gifts and resources through a culture of generosity and mutual love, as we recognise and celebrate that we are all part of the one Body of Christ. Likewise, we are keen to learn from others, working together in creative ways to enrich the Church and our outreach.

We want to be a church that is creative, resourceful, sustainable, generous and thankful, and each of our aims will be done in a way that is creative.