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Well, it's worth knowing basically everything about your parish.

A helpful source can be the parish bulletin, which is called "Parish News". A new issue is printed every Sunday. It's worth checking it out to get the most up-to-date information about what's happening in the parish and what's coming up in the near future - you can read the latest issue here and the archived ones at this link.

It is also worth remembering that simply “going to church" is not the same as "belonging to a parish”.

According to the Polish Catholic Mission Statute, a person registered with a specific Local Polish Catholic Mission is one who voluntarily registers with the parish and takes care of maintaining a living bond with it. This can be expressed, among other things, through:

  • participation in services or events organized by L-PMK;
  • care for the functioning of L-PMK,
  • material or spiritual well-being,
  • membership in the Gift Aid program run by L-PMK - The Statute of the Polish Catholic Mission gives great freedom to the Local Communities of the Polish Catholic Mission (in our case, the parish of St. Andrew Bobola in Hammersmith) in determining the grace period, i.e. the time that elapses between submitting an application and the actual acceptance into the parish.

IMPORTANT ADDITIONS:
Unfortunately, we cannot help you obtain the necessary certificates "immediately". Therefore, please familiarize yourself with two more deadlines:

  • The Time - please remember that submitting a completed and signed application for parish membership does not work immediately. To receive the "status of a parishioner" you still need time, which we can call the adaptation period. Its length is determined by the resolution of the Administrative Council and can last from several days to several months. In our parish, it lasts at least 3 months.
    This period is a normal procedure, used in administrative solutions. It is also justified by the care for the well-understood interest of people maintaining the church and animating the religious and social dimension of the parish. It is also justified by pastoral experience and a study of various cases that we have dealt with.
    NOTE: The parish priest can shorten this period by four weeks.
  • The Membership Period – it is understandable that since the rules for registering with a parish have been defined, there should also be rules describing resigning from the parish or expiring membership in it. The L-PMK HAMMERSMITH Administrative Council - guided by GDPR regulations - adopted a solution that the lack of contact with the parish, office, church or community for one year, releases the parish from receiving personal data in the register and transfers the record of the person or family to the archive. The IT system and its security make it possible to introduce a conservation period, which in practice extends the activity of the parishioner's card by one more year, after which the card is definitely transferred to the archive. Transferring to the archive means deleting the record from the list of parishioners, any administrative actions require re-registration.