St Agatha's Church

07/09/2026

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

'O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore Thee,
Who truly art within the forms before me;
To Thee my heart I bow with bended knee,
As failing quite in contemplating Thee.'

06/09/2026

You are invited to...

High Mass of Our Lady of Walsingham
(Ordinariate Use)

Saturday 26th September 2026 @ 11am

Setting: Mozart Missa Brevis in D Major (KV194)

Guest Preacher: Dom Cuthbert Brogan OSB

Refreshments follow

St Agatha's Church, Cascades Approach, Portsmouth, PO1 4RL

Nearest rail station: Portsmouth & Southsea (direct services from London Waterloo)

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OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM: Pray for us

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HISTORY:

Built between 1893 and 1895, the Church of St. Agatha in Portsmouth was founded as an Anglo-Catholic shrine by Father Robert Dolling to serve an impoverished local community. Designed by J.H. Ball in an striking Italianate Romanesque basilica style, its interior famously featured extensive art, including what became Britain's largest sgraffito mural. Although the surrounding area was heavily bombed during World War II, the church miraculously survived, but the loss of the local population led the Church of England to close it in 1954. The building subsequently spent decades used as a naval storage facility and narrowly escaped a 1960s road-widening project that destroyed its Lady Chapel. In 1994, St. Agatha’s Trust rescued and restored the derelict structure for worship, and in 2012, the Traditional Anglican Communion congregation entered Full Communion with the Catholic Church, becoming part of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

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'As one would expect from the Ordinariate, the liturgy was magnificent: a solemn High Mass, with music by Mozart (the Little Credo Mass), and some thrilling organ playing, as well as several much loved English hymns. The ars celebrandi was to be admired, and I was in awe of the altar servers, both for their professionalism and their number.'
(Fr Lucie-Smith describing a previous ceremony)

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham
fans

03/09/2026

02/09/2026

"The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life."

​"The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows."

​"The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself..."

30/08/2026

“One merits more by devoutly assisting at a Holy Mass than by distributing all of his goods to the poor and traveling all over the world on pilgrimage.”

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Photo: Solemn Mass at St Agatha's, Portsmouth.

15/08/2026

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

…by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.

~Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII, 1950

07/08/2026

A Jewel in the town
By Fr Maunder and Dr Goodlad
https://lms.org.uk/magazine
(Autumn 2026 Edition)

02/08/2026

A picture of St John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, joined us on the sanctuary today. His Feast is celebrated on 4th August.

Let us offer prayers for Fr Maunder and Nathaniel, our seminarian.

The month is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and our Holy Father asks us to pray this month for evangelisation in the city: Let us pray that in large cities often marked by anonymity and loneliness we find new ways to proclaim the Gospel, discovering creative paths to build community.

ST JOHN VIANNEY: PRAY FOR US

31/07/2026

Of your charity pray for the soul of Michael Foley.

"O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful: grant unto the souls of thy servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins; that through pious supplications they may obtain the pardon which they have alway desired. Who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen."

19/07/2026