Our Parish Picnic at Buckfast Abbey

On Tuesday 23rd June 2026, Our Lady and Saint Neot, Liskeard; Our Lady of Light, Sclerder Abbey, Looe; Our Lady of the Angels, Saltash; St Joan of Arc, Torpoint; held our Parish Picnic at Buckfast Abbey in the wonderful relaxing and joyful, atmospheric grounds of the Benedictine Monastery on the edge of Dartmoor, Devon. The day was kindly planned and organised by our Parish Council and many parishioners came, representing the above four churches of our parish.

We arrived in time for the mid-day Mass, Fr Cyriacus, who had joined us, was invited by Father Abbot to officiate the Mass for us in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
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After Mass we were able to look around the tranquil St Mary’s Abbey and its rare opportunity to encounter a Roman Catholic monastic community. Today Buckfast Abbey is the only English Medieval Monastery to have been restored and used again for its original purpose.

We then adjourned to the shade and picnic benches outside to enjoy our picnic and walk around the grounds. The constantly evolving gardens of Buckfast Abbey provide a pleasant environment for visitors and monks alike. Modelled partly on medieval plans, the gardens have been planted simply and boldly to reflect the scale of the church and the unadorned character of the surrounding architecture. The gardens are separated into small, self-contained areas – the Lavender Garden, Sensory Garden, and Physic Garden – which are surrounded by open spaces and wonderful trees that change with the seasons. In the summer, the gardens are filled with their scent, attracting bees and butterflies.

At 2pm we gathered round the beautiful statue of Smiling Mary looking down at the baby Jesus in her arms, to sing and pray. We started with Pope Leo’s prayer for peace from Easter and sang “Make me a channel of thy peace”. We held a minute silence for all those currently suffering in world conflicts and prayed for the only Christian town in Israel, Taybeh, where Christians are suffering. We said a decade of the rosary: The Crucifixion: and we finished by singing “As I kneel before thee” and a final prayer for our parish and thanked God for a blessed day and for our unity.  Weather-wise it turned out to be one of the hottest days ever recorded in June! But that did not deter the number of parishioners who turned out for a day that offered an opportunity for prayer, quiet contemplation and reflection.