If picking up litter doesn’t sound your ideal as a suitable preparation for a feast, you may want to think again. St Wilfrid’s (Preston, BRI) organised a ‘Litter Picking Novena’ leading up to the celebration of Pentecost on Sunday the 20th of May. The project was part of the parish’s Live Simply/Laudato si’ efforts.

“The ‘novena’ language is partly in jest, but also suggests that attending to the needs of our polluted common ‘home’ is both a prayer and a work of mercy, if people want to make it so," explains Fr Peter Randall, Assistant Parish Priest at St Wilfrid’s. It was never easy to find a date and time acceptable to everyone for a common ecumenical or inter-faith work that serves the local area. But a nine day period, when people could opt in when convenient, and link with others 'as and when' seemed worth a try.

Shirley Russo worked with South Ribble Council to establish a route with two collection points for the Council to collect bags with litter for recycling, and bags with other rubbish. She also contacted local churches for a collaborative effort, while Fr Stephen contacted a local mosque.

“It's a bit late to be searching for litter as the undergrowth by this time of the year makes it difficult to spot,” says Fr Peter. “However, under the trees, and where there are remains of camps where people have been sleeping out provide a range of litter, some of which has been lying for years. It's now in bags, and ready for collection, and there's something of restitution and reconciliation in such a simple action.”

The featured photo illustrates one of the final moments of the collection - when many of the bags were already taken away - with Shirley Russo and Margaret Nelson from the Faith and Justice Group guarding the fruits of the team labour on the last day.

"Fr Peter came up with a good name for us - the Prombles of Preston - so I would add to this that we are the northern cousins of the Wombles of Wimbledon" Shirley jokes. She talks about the fantastic experience it has been on all counts, as a community and parish. Because it was organised as a joint work with other local Faith Groups, it has been as well a positive exercise of coming together for our ‘Common Home’ regardless of individual beliefs.

“Groups received positive comments from the public as they were litter picking, thanked for taking the time to clean up” Shirley says. “Hopefully this will inspire people to think twice about dropping rubbish and recycling. We aim to do this again next year slightly earlier or later in the Autumn/Fall perhaps.”

Read also about the heartfelt talk on Laudato si' hosted by St Wilfrid’s, as part of the parish’s commitment to Live Simply.