Sunday 06 July 2025 will mark the start of Saint John’s Cathedral International Community English Mass at Saint John’s Cathedral at 15:00 hours. This is a Liturgical Celebration that will be taking place, from now on, every first Sunday of the Month at 15:00 hours and it is dedicated to everyone that speaks or understands English.

The Saint John’s Cathedral International Community is a community that is willing to welcome and accompany our foreigner brothers and sisters in their effort of integration into our Dutch society and local church. This is about a commitment with all together to build up a community that allows us to strengthen, deepen and promote the catholicity of our Catholic Church, which is house for everyone. The setting of Saint John’s Cathedral International Community also follows on the exhortation of our new Pope Leo XIV who, in his Homily of inauguration has invited us, “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to build a Church based on the love of God and sign of unity, a missionary church that open her hands to the world and announce the Gospel to everyone” (Pope Leo XIV).

It is a special opportunity for our foreigner brothers and sisters to integrate new community and to meet new friends. We want to form a church-family that gives to our brothers and sisters the opportunity to live deeply their faith despite the non-stop growing secularization as it is experienced in our land, the Netherlands. And celebrating the Liturgy together, has the power to achieve all the hereabove mentioned objectives, since Liturgy is an act of worship that is not a mere combination of rituals and symbols, but a practice that helps us as believers to enter into a deep relation with God and with one another.

The choice of Saint John’s Cathedral is that this is the mother of all the churches of our Diocese. The presence of such an International Community not only confirms the catholicity of our local Church, but at the same time promotes the missionary identity of a church that is called to be a house for everyone. The Church that is defined by the Second Vatican Council as “People of God of the New Covenant”. That means a local Church that is open to people of all race, tongues and nations (Mt. 28,16-20) and where cultural difference and language will never be an obstacle.

Please, feel free to join us on Sunday 6th July at 3 pm and every First Sunday of every month.

Pater Yves