LAST Sunday saw the end of an era as Mass was celebrated at St Bede's Church for the last time, and on New Year's Day the social centre also closed.

The good people of St Bede's have been treated extremely shabbily by the "Men in Black" of the Salford Diocese and now the vultures have gathered and are picking at the corpse, stripping our beautiful church bare with undignified haste. Perhaps they have cast lots for the spoils!

St Bede's Parish was born out of St Joseph's 50 years ago and now we are back where we started. Who says that history does not repeat itself?

St Bede's church and social centre have been at the heart of the community for many years and it has been well served by them; now they are gone with very little notice. It would seem that all the fine work undertaken by clergy and numerous lay people at St Bede's over the years counts for nothing.

Consultations and discussions may very well have been taking place for some time with regard to the future of St Bede's, but that dialogue has certainly not included the people who matter: the parishioners.

It seems to me that diocesan thinking has been coloured by the prospect of a very large capital receipt rather than the needs of the community, many of them elderly, which it seeks to serve.

O SALUTARIS HOSTIA