#HomesWithDignity 

The parish of St Jude is tucked away between the national park in the East and the bustling railway station to the West. Within this very large and populous area is a tiny community of 800 Catholics most of whom struggle to eke out a respectable living. But what we do not have in material terms we more than compensate with our spirit of community. We are a small Church with a big heart!

It is this large heart (with the help of so many in the Archdiocese) that made us one of the first and perhaps continued to be the only responders to the people who fell victims of the tragedy on the first of July 2019 in which 31 people lost their lives and more than 250 families were rendered homeless.

The parish community had just adopted a new mission statement, ‘the Judean Family; striving to witness to the love and service of Christ to all people’ and it seems that Jesus took us very seriously in our outreach ‘to all’. Out of the 250 families that we reached out to only one was Christian.

But while the torrential rains battered the slopes of the National park where the tragedy occurred, it also showed no mercy to the rest of Malad East. Several homes in our parish were destroyed or submerged under water, leaving people with nothing. After having served others most in need, the parish as a family, reached out to our own.