05 Apr – ‘Looking Back’ Lent Lunch

On Friday 5th April the Commission jointly organised with the Leeds CAFOD Volunteer Centre a ‘Looking Back’ Lent lunch.
Both Bronagh in the CAFOD office and Joe & John for the J&P Commission have been doing some serious ‘sorting out’ at the respective offices.

There was much stuff that had to be thrown away – yellowing 20 year old copies of the Tablet, for instance. Bronagh (the CAFOD coordinator), being much younger than Joe & John, was somewhat bemused by an actual slide projector and the rigmarole of feeding in slides the right way round.
The information, of course, was all very out of date and there is little point in keeping such materials.
However, there were a number of resources that do need to be kept. There was a beautiful CAFOD Hunger Cloth which was formed of separate patches made by individual primary schools as part of the Year of Faith in 2012-13.

In the Justice & Peace office there were newsletters and Annual Reports stretching back to the 1980’s. Likewise, the Commission has a number of Working Parties in the 1970’s and 80’s that produced special booklets – one about the World of Work, one about Living more Simply (long before the Live Simply Award was invented) and one based on a visit by Commission members to Northern Ireland in 1986 when the Troubles were at their height.
The most popular item for those attending was a collection of photographs, mainly of people. Most of these did not say who was included in the photograph and there was much debate about who some of them were.

A number of photos reminded people that in the 1980’s the Commission had a strong partnership with South Africa.

Bronagh undertook her re-organisation so that the available office space is now more geared for volunteers coming into the CAFOD centre to do some work, print resources out etc – rather than being an office space for Bronagh. At J&P we had just put off sorting stuff out for the last 5 years!
However, both offices are looking much improved as a result.
The J&P space includes a considerable library of books about issues of Social Justice. A number of them are probably a bit dated now but many of them are still pertinent. Anyone is welcome to come and take a look – and borrow items if they find anything of interest. However, best to email the office to arrange a time as there are significant periods when there is no one in the J&P office. The same applies if anyone would like to come and take a look at the photos -perhaps you could help us identify some of the people?