July 30, 2023

Dear Friends in Christ,

There are many grace-filled moments in the four years I have had the privilege of serving as your pastor. One of them came in my early months at the parish when Archbishop Paul Etienne came to visit St. Bridget’s for the first time. Following Mass, he greeted parishioners, including our dear Barbara Sauntry who passed on recently just three months shy of her 104th birthday. The picture below of her greeting the archbishop is one of my favorites of both of them.

Archbishop Etienne is a dedicated pastor and servant leader of the church in Western Washington who has been in the news of late. He recently released a pastoral letter to offer his encouragement as we move through the Partners in the Gospel strategic plan for the future organization of our parishes. In it, he writes:

With Partners in the Gospel, we are embarking on a journey that will take us to new places as a local Church. There will be much that is unfamiliar in the years ahead — there will be joy as well as grief, as together, we learn what it means to become parish families. My prayer, and my hope, is that in this process, we will build sustainable, vibrant communities — communities that allow priests and people to thrive and carry the Gospel more effectively to the people of Western Washington. We are doing something new.

You can find a link to the entire pastoral letter here: https://bit.ly/3OrvC0S or in the Friday Weekly Word email.

Our archbishop will also be part of a delegation making a “Pilgrimage of Peace” to Japan from July 31 to August 12, 2023.  Please see this week’s bulletin for details. We are invited to pray a “Novena of Nuclear Disarmament” from August 1-9, which can be found at the following link:  https://bit.ly/3Y56mRt

Blessings of peace,

Fr. William Heric, Pastor