Our Addresses...

Welcome to the website of The Redemptorists of the London Province. We would like to share our Vocation story and religious life with you.

We serve communities in Scotland, England, and Wales and stand together with our brothers serving in Zimbabwe, and around the world. We are an international Catholic Congregation, leading a vowed religious life following Christ the Redeemer, making an impact in a broken world, making a difference in people’s lives. We do this through the inspiration of our founder St. Alphonsus de Liguori. We do this by leading a shared apostolic life of prayer, meditation and devotion to the Eucharist, the source and summit of our christian lives. We do this by being close to the powerless and abandoned, focusing on the proclamation of  the Good News of Plentiful Redemption.

"I want to say to you, a big thankyou - as big as the world itself, for your nearness to people.. try hard to strengthen it. If we want to save the world we have to unite ourselves to the people by being in the midst of the world."

 

The words of Pope Paul VI to The Redemptorists

In these pages we tell our story, and the stories that have inspired us.  A young man once asked:" What more can I do to have eternal life?" The path taken toward exploring a vocation to religious life always begins with a question. Let us share with you our life, our community, and our mission to follow Christ as Redemptorist confreres, priests and brothers. Follow the guide at the top of each page to find out what ministries we are engaged in within the UK, and in our region of Zimbabwe. Come and see where we live. You may find the answers you are searching for in the words that follow.

Read on that you may share our hopes and dreams.

In the Upcoming year we will be focusing on one of our very special Redemptorist confreres, a saint whose feast falls on the 15th March each year, called St. Clement Hofbauer. He helped develop and move the Congregation over the Alps and is also known as the second founder of our Order. To find out a little about this extraordinary man, view the Video presentation given by our Former Superior General Archbishop Joseph Tobin CSsR. To view, click here.

"A Religious vocation is a gift freely given and freely recieved."

Pope John Paul II - San Antonio, 1987

Making People Matter

Living in shared communities that are free and faithful to the teachings of the Church. We are dedicated to finding ways to 'proclaim the Gospel anew'. Because of this our communities are at the heart of the Church. (St. Alphonus our founder is the only moral theologian whose opinion the Church has specifically said all can follow.) Engaging in ministries of outreach bringing Christ's message of truth and liberation to the poor and abandoned.

Redemptorist missionaries stand on holy ground, we see early morning mystics paging through tatered prayer books, the promise of the prayers gives us confidence. We see the teenager smiling at old church jokes she has never heard. We see families coming to church, parents having worked eight hour shifts, prepared the meals and fed the dog, and still getting to the mission. We counsel people who witness to a holiness they are unconscious of. Each of us is evangelised by the experience of a Mission.

A Redemptorist Missionary

Our Heritage

No-one likes losing, yet, when this happened to a promising lawyer from Naples, it became a turning point. Until losing the court battle, Alphonsus de Liguori had spoken for the powerful elite of his day, but he felt that something was missing. Through prayer he began to see that people around him were in need, and through his contact with the poor, he realised that God was calling him to serve people in a new way.

Eventually he became a priest and bishop, and is now honoured as a doctor of the church and patron of confessors. He is the only Moral Theologian whose opinion the Roman Catholic Church has specifically said we can follow on moral issues. His opinions always came from a profound understanding of people and their real life situation. This is an understanding and wisdom that Redemptorist priests and brothers continue to share with the contemporary Church.

What Redemptorists try to do is to receive from people the wealth of their ordinary experience and when this meets with gospel compassion, something wonderful emerges. And that is what they want to share with the whole world.

Gerry Mulligan, C.Ss.R. Middlesbrough

Alphonsus founded the Redemptorists in 1732 to proclaim the good news to the abandoned.  His words were now at the service of Christ, reaching the poor through preaching, writing and retreats.

Pope John Paul described Alphonsus as “a close friend of the people…a missionary who went in search of the most abandoned…a founder who wanted a group which would make a radical option in favour of the lowly…a bishop whose house was open to all…a writer who focused on what would be of benefit to people.” In all of the above, we his present day brothers, continue Christ’s mission to the marginalized through the inspiration of our brother Alphonsus.

The principal thing I recommend to you is the love of Jesus Christ.  Very much are we bound to love Him. For this end He has chosen us from all eternity and called us into His Congregation, there to love Him and to make others love Him.  What greater honor what greater mark of love could Jesus Christ show us?  He has taken us from the world in order to draw us to His love and so that, during the pilgrimage of this life by which we must pass into eternity, we might think of nothing but of pleasing Him and of bringing those crowds of people to love Him who, every year by means of our ministry, put themselves into the grace of God.

St. Alphonsus Liguori, C.Ss.R.

Read more about our early heritage and the life of our inspiration St. Alphonsus.