by Mrs Julie Oates

One evening in July of 2010 I received a phone call from Fr Kelly. He said that they needed a banner to take to Hyde Park for the Pope’s visit in September. He’d looked at a website where you could purchase such banners and the prices were astronomic, also the designs weren’t very inspiring. Someone had reminded him that I was ok with a needle and thread, and he wondered if I would be prepared to organise a group of people to design and make a banner for All Saints. I agreed, imagining a busy sewing circle beavering away over the summer. A notice in the parish newsletter followed; one or two parishioners got in touch and offered their help, but they had other commitments, which meant the amount of time they could give was limited. After two weeks of dithering I decided to put a design together and see if Fr Kelly approved.

I waited anxiously for his opinion and was really pleased that, apart from changing the wording he seemed happy with my initial ideas. I began sewing and before I knew it the summer was over – did I really have 7 weeks off work to coincide with the school holidays!

Finally it was time to put the various components together, but first there was a discussion as to what colour the background should be – Fr Kelly and I finally agreed on red.

A week before the papal visit to Hyde Park I was able to take the banner into mass and hand it over to Fr Kelly during the Offertory. It was finally complete and I could relax knowing that something I had made would be at Hyde Park, even if my family couldn’t.

When designing the banner I wanted to incorporate a sense of Celtic heritage as well as identifying our parish and what it stands for. The designs in the four corners are “The four evangelists” and are based on the beautifully illuminated Book of Kells, which I was fortunate to see, on a trip to Dublin a few years ago. The top centre panel is a set of papal keys – a reference to the fact that the banner was first created for the papal visit. The bottom centre panel is a red dragon - an obvious symbol of our Welsh origins.

The centre piece of the banner is the parish logo – for which I can’t claim any credit – but which completely embodies our six communities – the roots of the one parish of All Saints, which we have become; and which continues to grow. I had hoped to write the names of the six communities along the roots, but in all honesty I ran out of time.