Parish Picnic 2025: An Anniversary & Sustainability Effort

Food and memories to share

The 2025 Parish Picnic takes place on Sunday, Aug. 31, at St. Christophorus Church in Frankfurt's Preungesheim district, where we've held the event in recent years.

This year marks the 5th anniversary of combination of two parishes into the International English-Speaking Parish (Seat in Frankfurt) -- St. Leonhard's, in the city center, where the English-language community was founded in 1995, and St. Mary's, currently in the nearby town of Liederbach, whose English-language parish was established in 1975. Our celebrations, both at Mass and during the picnic in the church courtyard, will focus on how the creation of the single parish sustains the life of faith for English-speaking Roman Catholics living in and around Frankfurt.

Mass will start at 12 noon and we will continue the effort begun in 2024 to make the event part of the parish's sustainability push.

So please bring:
(1) A salad and/or dessert to share with other parishioners
(Meat and drinks will be provided by the parish)
(2) A prize for the tombola/raffle
Proceeds from the tombola go to the 2025 Parish Charity, helping to finance construction of a new chapel at St. Francis College Capuchin Formation House in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh India. The project was proposed by Brother Anil Suthi OFM Cap, who was cooperating priest at our parish in 2024 and is now rector at the college. See the next page for details.

Picnic organizers will ask parishioners to sign up for the event to ensure enough meat and drinks are ordered. You'll also be asked for the food you'll be bringing and any prize for the raffle you can contribute. We also need volunteers to help set up the site; if you can contribute your work, please let the organizers know when signing up.

AGAIN THIS YEAR:
In order to make the picnic more environmentally sustainable, we ask all who attend to please BRING YOUR OWN plates, cutlery and cups – the NON-DISPOSABLE kind -- and to please take them back home with you for washing afterward. Also, you will need to supply your own napkins. The parish will not provide paper plates, etc.
Thank you for your help in cutting down on the waste!

*** Please consider bringing an extra plate and cutlery to share with your neighbor, in case they forget. ***

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The picnic address:

St. Christophorus Church
An den Drei Steinen 42c
60435 Frankfurt

For those taking public transport, the closest stops are Theobald-Ziegler-Straße on the U5 U-Bahn line, with an 8-minute walk to the venue, or Homburger Landstraße/Marbachweg on Bus M34, with a 9-minute walk.

Note that the service replaces the previous evening's Saturday Vigil Mass at St. Leonhard's and that weekend's Sunday Masses at Holy Cross and St. Mary's.

Parish Charity 2025: A Franciscan Spiritual Space for Seminarians in Eluru, India

Brother Anil Suthi OFM Cap served as cooperating priest at the International English-Speaking Parish in early 2024 while stationed at the Capuchin community at Liebfrauenkirche in downtown Frankfurt. In the middle of that year, he was called to serve in his home province as rector at St. Francis College, a Capuchin Order seminary in Eluru in Andhra Pradesh state, India. Our Parish Council agreed that this year's Parish Charity should contribute to the renovation of the chapel exterior and development of a Franciscan contemplative space there. Fund-raisers by the International English-Speaking Parish this year include the annual Parish Picnic raffle as well as periodic bake sales after Masses. Donations independent of those events will also be welcome.

You can read about the project in the attached letter from Brother Anil, below.