RE: “New challenge awaits Fr Ken” (CL 20/1/13), Fr Ken Howell is essentially a priest in the old-fashioned sense of the word/Word – a liturgist meaning someone committed to the Word and the Bread and Wine being shared with and through the people; a Brisbane boy, of course; an amateur chorister; and a lovely guy all round.
Congratulations on your appointment as parish priest of Burleigh Heads, Fr Ken.
The Gold Coast will love you as do the St Stephen’s Cathedral community.
I have been away from Brisbane for five years.
I came to Brisbane as a music student at the Conservatorium in 1970 during Archbishop Francis Rush’s time and have seen St Stephen’s blossom through priests, architects, liturgy commission directors, and archbishops and deans of the cathedral, and the guides and greeters … coming and going for 43 years.
Brisbane is a blessed city, and its heart is St Stephen’s Cathedral and the original St Stephen’s Chapel, and its soul is expressed through the beautiful art work and sculptures inside and outside the buildings.
The cornerstone is Christ and his flock who are the invisible people of Brisbane – praying, walking around Brisbane, spreading beauty, compassion, kindness, joy and gladness, pressed down and overflowing into our Brisbane and outer Brisbane into the archdiocese and spreading into the skin of this land.
CAROL McGOLDRICK
Cairns, Qld
