2024 Annual Mass of Thanksgiving for the Guild of St Stephen

Altar servers and their families are invited to join this year's annual Mass of Thanksgiving for the Guild of St Stephen.

Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Bernard Longley on Saturday 5 October at 12noon at St Chad’s Cathedral, followed by refreshments.

The Guild of St. Stephen is an international organisation of altar servers, founded in England in 1904 by Fr. Hamilton McDonald. The Guild has spread and developed since then, and is active in many parishes in the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

Altar servers take Saint Stephen - one of the first seven deacons chosen to assist the apostles in service (Acts 6) and the first martyr of the Church - as their patron.

The objectives of the Guild:

• To encourage, positively and practically, the highest standards of serving at the Church's liturgy and so contribute to the whole community's participation in a more fruitful worship of God.
• To provide altar servers with a greater understanding of what they are doing so that they may serve with increasing reverence and prayerfulness and thereby be led to a deepening response to their vocation in life.
• To unite servers of different parishes and dioceses for their mutual support and encouragement.

The Guild of St. Stephen in the Archdiocese of Birmingham is administered by the Diocesan Vocations Office.

The Director of the Guild is Fr. Craig Szmidt and the administrator is Kathryn Bayliss.

Those interested in attending are asked to contact the Vocations Office via email of the numbers of servers, family and clergy attending by Monday 16 September 2024. Contact details are: [email protected] 

Click on the poster below to download a PDF which you can print and display in your church.