Soho's St. Patrick Church

LONDON — Sex clubs, fashionable bars and restaurants, prostitutes and drug dealers — these are the main attractions for the crowds who throng the narrow streets of the Soho neighborhood in London's West End.

But in the midst of these spiritual stumbling blocks, the local Catholic Church is seeking to serve as a “spiritual lighthouse” and reclaim the people and streets for God.

Built of red brick in an Italianate style and with an imposing tower, St. Patrick's Church attracts many American tourists who stay in the hotels near the British Museum. Archbishop Fulton Sheen spent a number of summers here. The church is also a focal point for the capital's Latin American and Chinese Catholics, and each weekend, Mass is celebrated in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Cantonese.

When Father Alexander Sher-brooke became parish priest in 2002, leaving behind a middle-class parish in leafy west London, he immediately set about drawing up a radical and ambitious plan to respiritualize Soho. With the help of a team of volunteers, he has established an international school of mission, an SOS prayer line based in the church tower and a drop-in center for homeless people.

The church is also home to the Cenacolo, Shalom and Oasis prayer groups as well as the London Fertility Care Center, which aims to meet the needs of individuals and couples seeking moral alternatives to contraception and artificial reproductive technologies.

Father Sherbrooke

“There are a lot of things that happen here at St. Patrick's,” Father Sherbrooke said. “It's a bit like opening a door. Once a door is opened a lot of things come in. People want to take part in evangelization or commit themselves to a life of prayer. We're now beginning to think this through systematically.”

Father Sherbrooke has been personally exposed to Soho's seedy side. ”At certain times, I've been offered everything from girls to boys to drugs,” he said. “Soho is a place where there are a lot of people who need money quite quickly.”

So how different is the West End from suburban London?

“Someone once described West End parishes as spiritual snack bars — the West End parishes have all suffered from movement of population, but they have a very important ministry because of Masses, confession and adoration,” Father Sher-brooke said. “I call St. Patrick's a spiritual lighthouse where the work of the Lord is happening in a world that is hedonistic and, dare I say it, anti-God.“

“The sacrament of confession is very important here,” he continued. “I'm kept very busy with confession without ever having really pushed it.”

”The challenge of evangelization here is in some ways easier to define,” Father Sherbrooke said.” … First and foremost, we are collaborating in bringing people to the Lord.

“For example, the idea of the Cenacolo prayer group is to befriend adults from the streets and then direct them to a Cenacolo community in Ireland or Italy. Once a month the members of the group go out into the streets after adoration and rosary. So far they have taken four addicts into a Cenacolo community.”

Forming Youth

A key initiative at St. Patrick's is Commission, an international school of mission that currently has seven students.

“Young people today don't know anything about the Christian faith,” Father Sherbrooke said. “You can give young people an experience of religious enthusiasm but when it comes to engaging with the world, what do they know about the structure of the Mass, the call to evangelization, the theology of the body? The school of mission provides the best lecturers up and down the country and it tries to form the young people. The disciples were with the Lord for three years before being sent out.”

In his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia In Europa (The Church in Europe) Pope John Paul II said:

“I encourage the Church in Europe to give greater attention to the training of young people in the faith. … There is no need to fear making demands upon them with regard to their spiritual growth. The way of holiness should be pointed out to them and they should be encouraged to make demanding choices in their following of Jesus, drawing their strength from an intense sacramental life. In this way they will learn to resist the enticements of a culture which often proposes values which are merely superficial or even contrary to the Gospel, and become capable of demonstrating a Christian approach to every sphere of human life, including entertainment and leisure” (No. 61-62).

Steve White, 27, from Milwaukee, decided to join the school after hearing about it while he was studying at the University of Dallas.

“I didn't know what I wanted to do after university,” he said. “When I heard about the school of mission, I figured it would help me to find out what God wanted me to do with my life.”

He has noticed a big difference between the Church in America and in Britain.

“Britain is a less-Christian country,” White said. “Yet, although the numbers of Catholics are small, people have a great sense of the need for evangelization. The Masses are packed in the States but there isn't the same sense of urgency.”

Fellow student Maureen Cox, 27, returned to her faith last year after abandoning it as a teen-ager.

“Family and friends were asking me questions about Catholicism that I couldn't answer, so I applied to join the school of mission to get some formation,” she said. “The most challenging part of my time here has been the street evangelization. Many people are often quite open to discussing faith, although we never see the fruits. But we could be scattering seeds that bear fruit later on.”

Father Sherbrooke insists this kind of evangelization is a basic component of an active faith.

“If you are not speaking to people about Jesus Christ and bringing people to Jesus Christ, your faith will grow weak,” he said. “The body needs food and water to stay alive. The Church needs to evangelize to stay alive.”

”We know that only God can console,” he added. “This is why we're trying to build up a host of projects — so God can be God. We started with very little. But the most important thing is that we start on our knees.”

Greg Watts writes from London.