Church News Bits By Gerard van Veen
Silver Jubilee Year 2022
It is with great pleasure and a feeling of satisfaction that I recently found out that the year 2022 is the jubilee year of “Church News Bits”.
At the request of the late Roger Snow, founder and at that time publisher of The Daily Herald, I wrote the first column of Church News Bits for the Weekender of Saturday, May 31, 1997, so the year 2022 is its silver jubilee year.
To celebrate this occasion, I have decided to do something special. In the coming weeks, I will write and you will read church news, not from different church communities far away, but we will get acquainted with the history of our own local church community: the parish of St. Martin of Tours.
Most probably we will learn about our parish in the coming weeks under the following headings:
- St. Maarten in the first half of the 19th century
- Still in slavery time
- The long stay of Father Nieuwenhuys
- Our Christian brothers and sisters
- Hardships in the late 1880s
- The rich blessing
- On the way to maturity
- Some pariah melee
- Our building pastors
- Remembering Father Alfie
- Vatican 1 and Vatican 2
- How SVD [Society of the Divine Word-ed.] came to St. Maarten
Thank you for your prayers
I am back again after an absence of about two months. On behalf of my wife Bernadine and myself, I want to thank all who prayed for me or who sent me their best wishes after my heart infarct that changed my schedule.
After a few weeks in the hospital of St. Maarten and of Curaçao also, I returned home and hope to recover with the help of the prescribed medicines. Once again, thank you for your prayers, and I hope to continue serving you with the Church News.
