This Wednesday, the 1st of March, it will begin the Lent, with the Ash Wednesday.
Unfortunately, there won’t be celebrations in English in Utrecht.
You can however attend any of the celebrations in Dutch:

• At 12:30 – Celebration of Eucharistie – in the Augustinian sisters near the St. Augustine church, address: Waterstraat 2, 3511 BW Utrecht;
• At 18:30 – Rosary – in the St. Catherine Cathedral;
• Between 18:30 and 18:50 – Confessions – in the St. Catherine Cathedral;
  At 19:00 – Celebration of Eucharistie – in the St. Catherine Cathedral

Dear brothers and sisters,                                   

In the beginning of every year the campaign Church Balance takes place. This campaign is about keeping the financial balance of the own parish (more) healthy. This campaign usually raises questions about how the finances of the parish are arranged. Father Huitink wrote a letter to the parishioners regarding the campaign. You can find this letter here: https://englishmassutrecht.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/letter-from-fr-huitink-about-the-church-balance-december-2016.pdf

Schematically the budget of the church looks like this:

Expenditures:

• regular maintenance of the church buildings;
• heating and electricity;
• insurance of the buildings;
• staff (priests, secretariat, sacristan);
• renovation of church buildings;
• candles, hosts and mass leaflets;
• contribution to the diocese.

Revenue:

• campaign Church Balance;
• collection during mass for own parish;
• inheritance from deceased;
• renting of rooms (e.g. for orchestra rehearsals);
• revenue from investments.

We are of course happy with every financial contribution that you can make. The costs of celebrating a mass are higher than is usually assumed. With costs for heating, priest, candles, electricity add quickly up to € 250,-. Luckily the collection mostly covers this. Next to that the parish has the costs of maintaining the buildings and other activities such as charity. Also the renovation requires a large amount of money. The church can apply for a subsidy from the government, this would cover around 30% of the total sum. The church will try to raise extra funds from contributions of the parishioners. The rest of the money comes from the capital the parish has built up in the past.

By registering as a parishioner at the secretariat of the parish the church can keep contact with you and they will also ask you every year to contribute to the campaign Church Balance.

The bank account of our parish is:
Salvator parochie St. Augustinuskerk
NL89INGB0000136740

Update on status of St. Augustine church

This week Fr. Ton Huitink published a video about a visit he did to the St. Augustine church with the restoration teams of the building and the organ.
In it Fr. Huitink explains that the church can’t be used at the moment due to the fact that a piece of the ceiling fell last year, from one of the rose forms sculpted there. The rose and it’s status is shown in the video.
Fr. Huitink explains that also the organ was restored, but cannot be placed at the moment because the balcony where it used to be is not stable and a new construction will be built to place it.
In the video we can see the people responsible for the organ project and also the ones for the restoration of the building.
Fr. Huitink finishes saying that he hopes that the church will be ready in the beginning of next year but not now due to safety reasons.

The full video is dutch spoken and can be found in Fr. Huitink Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ton.huitink

Left in picture the organ restorer Hans van Rossum