Bolton Tag

Mary Cole, 2019, cleaning the altar of the Original Shrine
ENGLAND, editorial team • We knew she was sick, yet the news came as a surprise, when Father Bryan Cunningham informed and those who got the information forwarded it to so many others who had walked the way with Mary Cole: “Mary Cole died peacefully on Sunday 7th January 2024. Four of the friends who have been supporting and caring for Mary were with her when she died. It was only yesterday when Mary repeated to me: «It’s OK I am ready to go». — “She was ready in AugustRead More
ENGLAND, Mary Cole • Last year our Methodist friends suggested that our three churches in Kearsley, Greater Manchester, should mark the Week of Christian Unity together each year, and to make a start they suggested a time of prayer in our shrine. We gladly took up the idea, and arranged to meet at 10 a.m. on 20 January 2018. The organisers had said privately that they would be happy if ten people turned up the first time, but more than double that number were there. Some young men even stoodRead More
ENGLAND, Mary Cole • The weather forecast was dire. The tail-end of the hurricanes that had devastated the Atlantic Coast of the USA was due to cross the UK during our crowning weekend with high winds and heavy rain. Our MTA would have to glorify herself. She did! The wind got up on Sunday night when everything was packed away again, and the rain, which we are used to, remained away when we needed it. Thanks to an ecumenical Scarecrow Festival in Kearsley the previous weekend, we were able toRead More
ENGLAND, Mary Cole and Tricia Barnes • That’s what happens when you begin to tidy the house. Last year Paul Cooper, our Schoenstatt artist, began to clear up and discovered a long-forgotten document signed by the founding Schoenstatters in England almost thirty years before in Walsingham, England’s premier Marian place of pilgrimage since 1061, in which they pledged to live their covenant with our MTA to the full, and crowned her picture. In return they asked her to give them a shrine. She has carried out her part – theRead More