All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear friends,

I have spent two days of this week at an excellent theological conference focussed on the Sacrament of Confession which took place at Pusey House in Oxford. It was a terrific time of theological reflection, discussion, and discovery.

I was asked to give a paper on how we have brought about a renewal in the use of the Sacrament of Confession at All Saints’.  Many participants at the conference were very interested in what has been going on here and rejoiced in what God is bringing about in our midst. I thought I would share with you here a précis of some of the ideas I spoke about.

I suppose the place to begin is with the difficult realisation that by the end of 2021, as result of a number of factors, the hearing of confessions had petered out to a very low point indeed at All Saints’. COVID didn’t help, but my clergy colleagues also made it clear that this had been a problematic trend long before the Pandemic.

A question the parish clergy of All Saints’ posed to themselves was how we could respond to this situation more creatively and get rid of as many barriers as possible that prevent people from accessing the sacrament, so that the Lord could use us better in his ministry of reconciliation.

One of the first things we did was to keep better records of how many confessions are heard at All Saints’. Most priests, until recently, didn’t record the number of confessions they hear in the service register. The current advice Church of England clergy are now given, however, is that the number of these sacramental encounters should indeed be recorded.

So part of this story is that we started recording the number of confessions we heard in 2022. Although we have nothing to compare with before that date, we now have a run of four years’ worth of statistics to reflect on, and these are trends we have seen:

In Advent 2022 we launched a new scheme to revivify use of the confessional at All Saints’ by inviting priests who were well known for exercising a ministry of reconciliation to hear confessions at set times at All Saints’.

In a way what I hope we were saying was this: rather than just offering an endless opportunity for anonymous sacramental interaction with a priest, we emphasised that the quality of the interaction would be deeper and better by having skilled confessors available.

Others joined the ranks of what people jokingly started to describe as our rota of “celebrity confessors” until we had a small college of three or four retired priests regularly undertaking this task in addition to the parish clergy.

A clear increase in confessions took place through 2023, which you can see in the graph above. I would say those penitents were a mixture of visiting people, parishioners, and regular penitents whom the confessors brought with them. But this also had a knock on to the numbers of confessions the parish clergy were hearing, too.

One dynamic which this prompted was that more members of our own congregation started to make their confessions again as it meant they could speak to priests who weren’t on the staff at All Saints’.

It became evident that trust was one of the most important things at the heart of the increase. People trusted the priests we had found knew what they were doing, had extensive experience of this ministry, and were unquestionably wedded to the idea of the inviolability of the seal of the confessional.

A next step happened in Lent 2024 that went hand in hand with the increase that came from having visiting confessors. It was the restitution of one clear confession slot on Saturday evenings.

Fr Alan wondered whether sitting once a week on Saturday nights would provide an opportunity for people to know that the sacrament was available in a way that removed all the hassle and embarrassment of making an appointment with the clergy. This intuition proved to be spot on, as you can see from the figures in 2024 and onwards.

We began a Saturday night slot in which the parish clergy sat to hear confessions for half an hour before the Saturday evening Vigil Mass. It proved very popular. Rarely does a week go by now when someone doesn’t come to make their confession on a Saturday evening.

So, hand in hand with the “celebrity confessors” having advertised times, we also saw with this Saturday slot the re-emergence of All Saints’ as a place you could anonymously drop into and find a priest waiting and available to hear confessions.

But we have also found that a large proportion of the people who avail themselves of this Saturday slot were new to All Saints’, young, and wanted to make their confession pretty regularly.

It strikes me that younger Gen Z parishioners are often far more at ease with the idea of prioritising mental wellbeing, exploring their inner world, and with consulting various sources of counselling, confidential advice, and emotional accountability – all of which means they are frequently very open to the idea of making their confession.

So the increase in the number of confessions heard at All Saints’ must be seen as having gone hand in hand with the growth in the number of new parishioners who are young adults in their twenties.

So to conclude, we have found that this pattern of visiting confessors and one regular weekly slot have mutually fertilised each other to the point that something has clearly emerged with a new generation of, often younger, Anglo-Catholics who use All Saints’ as a place where they can receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Our mathematical average is now 4.2 confessions a week, but obviously the reality involves slacker periods, and busier spells around Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

I am very happy to speak with anyone about making their first confession or returning to the practice of using the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Please be in touch with me or any of the parish clergy if you would find a conversation helpful.

I give thanks to God for the way in which he has used All Saints’ as a channel of reconciliation and forgiveness – both for our own parishioners and also for visitors and those who anonymously drop by.

Join me in asking the Lord to continue to bless us in this ministry and please pray for all confessors who hear confessions at All Saints’.

Fr Peter

Lent Giving

We are asked to consider two focusses for our Lent giving this year.

The first is to encourage those of you who have not yet done so to join the new scheme for supporting our Music Trust with regular giving which we launched in November. Joining the “Music Patrons of All Saints’” this Lent would be a wonderful way to ensure the musical tradition of our parish continues to flourish.

To join the Music Patrons of All Saints’, simply set up a regular gift of at least £10 a month to our Choir and Music Trust via this link. If you are an American tax payer, you can become a Music Patron by making a regular gift of at least $15 a month via our U.S. account here, and receive the tax relief in U.S.

A second recommendation is our annual Lent Appeal, which focusses our outward giving on the charity C4WS. This is the body that runs the homeless shelter we help staff at the American International Church on Tottenham Court Road.

You can read more about the wonderful work C4WS does here. We will no longer be accepting cheques or cash for our Lent Appeal. Instead, you are invited to make a donation to C4WS through the following link here.

Shadowlands Theatre Trip – only 3 tickets left!

There will be a parish Lent trip to the theatre to see Shadowlands on the evening of Thursday 5th March at 7.30 pm. There are now only three tickets remaining available for purchase.

The play is about the life of Christian author, philosopher and apologist C.S. Lewis and his falling in love in later life with Joy Gresham, whom he eventually married. Tickets cost £55 each. You can book a ticket and pay here.

The theatre trip will be followed by a teaching evening about C.S. Lewis’ writings on Tuesday 8th March. It will be led by Fr Alan and Fr Peter and will be particularly focussed on his book Mere Christianity (which it would be useful for those attending the session to have read). All are welcome at the teaching evening and you don’t have to have seen the play to participate.

Night Shelter Volunteers

Many thanks indeed to all who have volunteered to staff the cold weather night shelter this season at the American International Church on Tottenham Court Road.

We are still looking for volunteers for the night of Wednesday 18th/Thursday 19th March, which will be the last shelter of the current winter season for which we are responsible. Please be in touch with Fr Alan if you would like to volunteer.

Fulham Lay Congress

The Bishop of Fulham is hosting a Lay Congress entitled ‘Ready with a Reason’ on 21st March 2026 at S. Alban’s, Holborn, from 10.00 am to 3.30 pm.

Bishop Linday Urwin OGS will be the keynote speaker, reflecting on sharing the Gospel with others. Please see the flyer attached for more details.

Attendance last Sunday

For your prayers

The Friends of All Saints, Margaret Street

3rd – Dr William Benefield, Charlotte Black, Fr John Blackburn, David Blunden, William Bonnell, Fr Michael Bowie, John Bristow, Paul Brough

4th – Michael Brown, Dr Graham Burns, Derek Bussey, Katherine Butler, Adrian Carlton-Oatley, Norman and Zulette Catir, Kate Charles, Stuart Chillingworth

5th – Sir Robert Chote, Sandy Christian, Roger Clark, Catharine Clarke, Camilla Collins, Graham Colville, Karolyn Cooper, William Cooper Bailey

6th – Peter Coulson, Steven Cox, Dr Yvonne Craig, Julie Cridland, Dr Ryan Nicholas Danker, Kirill Dashkovskiy, Christopher Davies, Keith Day

7th – Peter Dennis, Laura Denton, Dr Michael Duggan, Pamela Edwards, Linda Edwards, Jane Elliston, Terrence Ellsworth, Richard Everton

The sick

Jean Castledine, David Craig, Asuncion Gines, Fr Harry Hodgetts, Helen Hughes, Canon David Hutt, Daniel Oliver, Carol Simmons, Ingrid Slaughter, Sebastian Taite-Ellis, Juliet Windham

Recently departed

Peter McInerney, Annabel Fearn

Anniversaries of death