"From immigrant to emigrant."

A review of St Mary's R C Church by Edmund Burke written on Wednesday 15th of July 2009

What a shame about St. Mary's! I think I can present, however, in my own case history, an illustration of what has happened to the church. My parents were both second-generation immigrants - Irish on my father's side, Lithuanian on my mother's - and we lived as parishioners of St. Mary's, within walking distance of the primary schools and the church. As the children grew up, some of us took apprenticeships, and others went to college or university, and by then we had moved out to the moorside "garden suburb" of Baildon, where our new parish was St. Aidan's. But we did not sever our family links with Bradford - my father not only did the job of Santa Claus at Busby's, but worked on the design and building of the grotto as well!

However, the factory jobs in Bradford and district still needed workers, and immigrants from SE Asia took over tasks formerly done by Irish and East European immigrants, so St. Mary's local Catholic population became smaller and smaller.

I now live in a London "garden" suburb, where I also used to work as a lecturer before I retired. However, I still visit Bradford whenever I can, for family reasons, and I would be very, very sad if St. Mary's closed down..

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