Rose tinted

In the foyer, a nice lady is selling Christmas draw tickets, £1 a strip, and herself deserves a prize because it’s so perishing cold out there.

On the door are pinned the winning numbers, both 38, in the biweekly draw. Catholicism has long been a good bet.

Father Jonathan Rose greets his flock, sheltered from the storm. “It looks like you’ve been plodging,” he says.

Subjacently soaked and fish-finger frozen, I’m in from a match at Shildon, head unerringly for a pew by the heater. You acquire such instincts after 16 years writing the At Your Service column.

At the back there’s a collecting bucket and a sign illustrated by some rather Satanic flames. “Help keep the heat on,” it says.

St Paulinus’s is in St Helen’s Auckland, almost across the road from the Anglican church from which the community takes its name, and was St Philomena’s until the saint fell from Papal grace.

Much venerated in the 19th Century, Philomena was said to be a young Greek – possibly Roman – virgin, martyred after refusing to marry the king. Several forms of execution were essayed, not least because legend has it the archers themselves were killed when the arrows turned round in mid-air and picked off half-a-dozen marksmen instead.

Scholars, however, began to question the whole truth of the story. “A supposed virgin and martyr,” says the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, tellingly. In 1961 the Vatican suppressed her cult, though many continue to invoke her.

Known generally as St Philomena’s but properly as Sacred Heart and St Philomena’s, the church in Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough, simply became Sacred Heart. Without benefit of belt and braces, the church in St Helen’s Auckland had to be rededicated.

It’s a former school, simply and attractively decorated, set back from the road, much loved. Until last Saturday I’d only been there for funerals and may still have been mourning the Arsenal. The weather notwithstanding, this one was standing room only, too.

FR Rose is parish priest not just of St Paulinus’s, its boundaries stretching deep into rural west Durham, but of the neighbouring Bishop Auckland parishes of St Mary’s and St Wilfred’s. Fifty years ago, he supposes, five or six priests would have covered the patch.

“He’s dynamic, he’s youthful and he makes the most of it in the right way,” says long-time parishioner John Green. “You never see him without him being out of breath, he has so much going on.

“He’s a good organiser, particularly good at getting things done. I know it doesn’t sound very religious, but he’s also done extremely well getting rid of debt.”

Fr Rose, previously in Farringdon, Sunderland, responds with due humility.

“They do most of the work themselves,” he says. “The only time I come in useful is because I know how to run a bar.”

We’d caught up with the highspeed priest at St Wilfred’s in January 2007, not long after his arrival, noted the pace at which he whipped through the service, that his arrival had been greatly welcomed and that Fr Rose was a catharsis by any other name. They were selling raffle tickets at St Wilfred’s, too.

“Were the Catholics to become the established church,” the column noted, “they’d surely run the National Lottery.”

IT’S the week before Advent, the feast of Christ the King. Pupils from St Chad’s RC school in Witton Park, three miles away, are wearing colourful cardboard crowns and reading the prayers.

Alongside is a new baby, lovely little thing, sleeping peacefully. None other may sleep during one of Jonathan Rose’s services.

There are three hymns, eucharistic liturgy, a homily delivered in slightly shorter time than it took Sir Roger Bannister to run a mile, notices about the winning draw numbers and one or two other things. A sort of ecclesiastical quickstep, it ends at two minutes past six, some leaving during the last hymn in an attempt to beat the rush.

Fr Rose can spare a few minutes, supposes that he’s gained two stones since last we met – all the time in his car – works a seven-day week, gave away his golf clubs when he went to Sunderland but, sensibly, ensures that he takes his holidays.

He’s also an enthusiastic skier and diver, just back from wreck diving off the little-known Pacific island of Yap – “You can’t even get a package holiday there” – that’s described in the brochures as “a true tropical Eden”

and where they still use stone money.

The largest limestone disc is said to weight four tons. It’s not what you’d call pocket money.

Fr Rose says that as far as possible he tried to run the three parishes as one, praises his lay people, says that he’s heard – “it came up at the parish council the other night”

– that Philomena may have been reinstated.

By 6.15pm there’s barely a soul left in church. John Green says that they like to do the “proper thing” and then have time for a bit of Saturday evening socialising.

A night down the club? A meal out somewhere? Close the door, light the light, we’re staying home tonight?

“Well maybe some of them,” says John, “but I think there’s quite a lot like a game of bingo.”

Farewell to Harry

THE Reverend Harry Lee, a much-loved priest whose ministry was spent entirely in the North-East, died on Tuesday.

He was 76.

Ordained in 1955, Harry served curacies at St Ignatius’s church in Hendon, Sunderland, and at St John’s in Nevilles Cross before becoming vicar of Medomsley, near Consett. For seven years from 1975 he was vicar of Holy Trinity, Darlington, and also served as chaplain to the Memorial Hospital before eight years as vicar of Brompton, Northallerton.

In 1990 he retired with his wife Averil to Shotley Bridge where, says his friend Paul Heatherington, he “served, counselled and generally brought good cheer to the parish of St Cuthbert, Benfieldside”.

Harry’s funeral is at St Cuthbert’s at 9.30am on Tuesday, December 1. He was also a good friend of these columns; a fuller appreciation will appear in next Thursday’s John North.