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Derry Catholics direct mailed with invite back to Mass

appeal: The ‘Big Invite’ comes amid concern about Mass attendance. Above, the leaflet. Below left, Fr Micheál McGavigan, left, and Fr Paddy O’Kane
appeal: The ‘Big Invite’ comes amid concern about Mass attendance. Above, the leaflet. Below left, Fr Micheál McGavigan, left, and Fr Paddy O’Kane appeal: The ‘Big Invite’ comes amid concern about Mass attendance. Above, the leaflet. Below left, Fr Micheál McGavigan, left, and Fr Paddy O’Kane

Priests in Derry are “direct mailing” Catholics with an invitation to return to Mass.

Thousands of homes in the city have already received the "Big Invite", which is a response to falling Mass numbers throughout the diocese.

And one priest has now organised teams of volunteers to knock on doors in what he described as a "new evangalisation".

Average Mass attendance in Derry city is believed to be as low as 23%, while in some parts of the city priests believe it could be as little as 15% of Catholics.

The Big Invite is the brainchild of Fr Micheál McGavigan and lay members of the large Three Patrons parish in the north of the city, made up of the former parishes of Pennyburn, Carnhill and Galliagh.

Fr McGavigan said with a local parishioner, he designed a leaflet which has been already distributed to 8,000 of the parish’s 30,000 Catholic homes.

“It’s been a massive undertaking because the parish covers such a wide area. So far the response has been hugely positive; in fact there were only two or three hostile responses over the last year.

“We’ve also distributed the invitation through primary schools in the parish and will be shortly distributing it further through the secondary schools."

The priest said the leaflet invited Catholics to prayer and to the miracle of the Mass.

Fr McGavigan said that the church did not “set the bar” at attending Mass but he hoped that the Big Invite would encourage people to return to their faith.

The leaflet also carries contact details for parishioners about their priest.

“We started thinking of it as a way of reaching new estates in the parish where maybe people might not have known what parish their homes were in and it developed from there,” he said.

Fr Paddy O'Kane of the neighbouring Holy Family parish said he has also decided to use the Big Invite as a form of “new evangelisation.”

He said: “I called for volunteers who were willing to give up just over an hour each week calling on the homes of this large parish of 2,500 families. Thirty six people came forward. I am delighted.

“On Tuesday evening I commissioned them to go out in twos like the first disciples. We begin next Monday evening starting with the estate of Ballymagroarty.”

The initiative is not the first innovative attempt by Fr O’Kane to bring the Catholic faith to the people.

He has previously invited the mother of a gay man to address parishioners, and used a former Bureau de Change office in a shopping centre to provide confessions on Saturday afternoons, branding the office the “Bureau de Prayer”.