- A Warm Welcome to 3 Rivers Roman Catholic Pastoral Area!
For first time visitors, we are a Roman Catholic Community of over 3000 Catholics celebrating their faith in 6 churches in the centre of Hampshire and are part of Portsmouth Diocese.

NEW PARISH ANNOUNCEMENT

The 3Rivers Leadership Team has confirmed that the four Parishes, which make up our Pastoral Area, are to be joined together into one new parish. The parish will adopt the name of our own Hampshire-born saint and will be known as the Catholic Parish of St Swithun Wells.  St Swithun Wells’ feast day this year falls on Friday 10th December and it has decided that we come together on this day.

“It is a bold step but an exciting one” comments Fr Michael Dennehy, Coordinating Pastor. “And it gives us a rich opportunity to achieve our vision:

Our Vision is of growing, vibrant communities of Faith in the Catholic Parish of St Swithun Wells.”

The background to this initiative goes back several months.  There was a joint meeting of all the 3 Rivers Pastoral Councils on Saturday 6th March, where it was agreed that we should make a formal request to the Bishop that we may transform the Pastoral Area and its six churches into one new parish. Our formal request was placed before the Bishop, who consulted with his Council of Priests in late May.  Our initiative was welcomed by the Diocese and permission has been granted.

The next step is to prepare ourselves for the new parish and to develop a plan of action which will transform every aspect of our Vision into a reality.

With this in mind, the 3 Rivers Pastoral Councils gathered together this week, on Tuesday 13th July, to discuss and agree, in outline, to a variety of projects.  The projects are geared toward creating strong foundations upon which to share our talents, build stewardship and place our Faith in the centre of our lives.

The Leadership Team promises to share the news of our progress with everyone and will be giving regular announcements between now and December.