Benemerenti medal award

Bernard Gagan of City of Salford Circle (102) was awarded this prestigious Papal Honour in recognition of the exceptional work undertaken by him over many years in the Parish of St. Mary’s, Swinton now combined with St. Mark’s, Pendlebury

Bro President Keith Hanrahan is pictured right congratulating Bernard at the July Circle Meeting. In his speech he expressed his considerable satisfaction that, through the example of brothers like Bernard, the Association could demonstrate the spirit of the Catenians in active parish works to brothers, wives, guests and prospective candidates for enrolment.

One of the basic aims of the Association is to encourage members to participate in Catholic Action. It is no surprise that many brothers throughout the world have been presented with awards in recognition of their considerable voluntary, charitable works.

Catena
The monthly magazine of the Association is now available on it’s own dedicated website at http://www.catenamagazine.com/
Congratulations on an excellent site to all involved!
The site includes an excellent reader and in future it is intended that an archive of previous editions will also be available for reading alongside the current edition.

The North West Public Speaking Competition 2011
The North West qualifier for the Catenian National Public Speaking Championships was held at The Alma Lodge Hotel, Stockport. on Feb 6th Once again, this prestigious annual event, which has been running since 1955, hosted competitors from many of The Catholic Colleges within Provinces 1 and 17 and the adjudicators, to whom we are considerably indebted, also commented on the exceptionally high quality of speeches across the board.

Bro. Grand Vice-President Tony Godden travelled down from Scotland to attend the event. In congratulating the competitors, he stressed the importance of the development of communication skills at an early age. He also expressed our deep gratitude particularly for the ongoing support of our sponsors - The Emerson Group, which is one of the largest privately owned property development companies in the UK.

Prizewinners were

1st. Gerard Norton of St. Bede's College, Manchester
2nd. Vita Fox of Loreto College , Manchester
3rd. Harry Garside of Xaverian College, Manchester

Gerard now goes forward to the National Finals later in the year.

Our distinguished adjudicators to whom we are considerably indebted were from left, Professor Clive Willis, Wendy Sutcliffe and Sir Netar Mallick 

The audience were once again well entertained by the very impressive quality of the presentations

 The National Catenian Golf Championships- 2010
This is an annual week long event with serious competition over the final 2 days. Thanks to the superb work of Brother Tony Delahunt of Purley Circle, it is always a magnificently well organised and extremely enjoyable mixture of golf on championship courses and of social events for both brothers and their wives and guests at top quality hotels.

The 2010 competition was held at the De Vere Hotel and Golf resort at Carden Park in Cheshire and was blessed with great weather which was a complete turnaround after the bleak winter and the cold spring weeks, which preceded it.

Province 1 golfers were well represented and, thanks to Dave Parkinson of Rochdale Circle brought home silverware.

Dave is pictured (Left) receiving the Uniroyal Salver for the Best Gross Score in the main competition from the incoming Grand President, Vernon De Cruz with Graham Magee, Captain of the Catenian National Golf Association

Dave was also presented with the AIB Trophy for Best Medal round for low handicappers (Right)

Close but no cigar was the verdict on the rest of the Province 1 golfers. However, Brian Lillis, current Captain of Province 1 Golf Society managed to have his picture taken receiving a pullover from Grand President Joe McNally for his 3rd place in a much lower profile category.

Province 1 outgoing Circle Presidents presented a statue of the Holy Family to Provincial President Frank Rafferty to mark their thanks for the exceptional work undertaken by Frank in spite of very serious illness during his year of office.

Sadly, on the 16th of September 2011 Bro. Frank succumbed to the cancer, which he fought over a considerable period with extraordinary courage and a positive approach, which astonished all, who met him. He was a true Christian and Catenian, and is certainly a great loss to the Association. .

During the year members of the 92nd St Boniface’s Salford Scouts in 1960 had a recent reunion.

The occasion was the presentation of a 40 year scroll to Jim Gallagher of City of Salford Circle, when (L to R) Vincent Gillibrand (Oldham), Dennis Miles, John McLellan (both City of Salford Circle) and Mike Gilleen (Davyhulme) met once again after almost 50 years.

The Catenian Association Official Website is at http://www.thecatenians.com/ and it has a considerable amount of information and further contact addresses. It also has a members area for the mundane parts of the administration of the Association. A welcome addition is the chat area, which is open to all Catenians.

Newsgroup
Due to the difficulties of managing the dissemination of announcements and messages throughout Province 1 via this site, we have set up a separate Newsgroup on Yahoo.
The Newsgroup gives all members the facility to add / amend information regarding Provincial events, send out reminders, add photos and upload files, to make them available to all. We have limited the membership initially to Province 1 Catenian Association Brothers although, if any brothers are interested in joining with a view to seeing how it operates and possibly introducing the newsgroup approach elsewhere, please follow the link below. .
We would hope to incorporate the features of the Newsgroup into this site in the future. In the meantime, to read the latest Province1 messages or to apply to join the Newsgroup, please Click Here.