Diocesan Pastoral Plan: our new parish

As most of you will know, Bishop Richard has started our Pastoral Plan for our Diocese. There is a lot of information about the plan here:

https://www.abdiocese.org.uk/diocese/pastoral-plan

What this means locally is that all our current parishes in the Deanery of Eastbourne and St Leonards will become one parish.

This does not mean that everything will be suddenly centralised- quite the opposite!

The clergy of the Deanery will become a team ministry- in Canon Law, this is called being “in solidum”. We will work together to make sure that we serve everyone as well as we can. A Moderator is appointed by Bishop Richard to ensure that we have everything in place to serve everyone. Our Moderator will be Father Kevin Dring, currently our Dean and Parish Priest of Our Lady of Ransom, Eastbourne.

Our Deanery stretches from Camber Sands to Alfriston! This is rather too big to operate as one, and so, while we shall be one parish, we shall form two hubs. The current parishes in Rye, Hastings, St Leonards, Battle and Bexhill will form one hub. Each hub will work together to support communities with various efforts.

Current communities remain vital in the Plan. St Mary Magdalene’s and St Martha’s form already a vibrant community in Bexhill, while each church also has its own groups and culture. This will not just survive, but be vital as we are all called to live our common baptismal vocation and all do what we can to bring the Gospel alive.

Although we are looking to streamline Mass times across each hub, this does not mean that you won’t be able to attend Sunday Mass where you currently do. We will also provide weekday Mass as much as possible.

All this is to make a vibrant community of disciples as we go forward into a future where we need to ensure that all are served and given the opportunity to serve as much as possible. Let’s all pray that this will be a great success in promoting the Gospel across coastal East Sussex- and particularly in Bexhill and Little Common!

Father Stephen

Written in April 2025.

Update in July 2025:

It has been confirmed that we shall not be one of the first new parishes to be launched in the autumn: however, we hope that we shall be ready very soon. We know that priests and deacons will still be appointed by Bishop Richard to individual communities within the new parish. A new website has been launched as a temporary guide to our current Deanery and future Parish- you can access it at https://www.eastbourne-stleonards.org.uk/ .

Update in November 2025:

It is now likely that there may be some delay in the formation of the new parish, but we are working increasingly closely for sacramental programmes, and preparing new pastoral activities together. The new Deanery newsletter will launch from Advent, accompanied by regular bulletins for our community.