“It’s busier than a normal Sunday,” says Peter de Boer (55). He looks around and says laughing: “I hope enough cake has been smashed.”
He is a board member of parish Sint-Titus Brandsma, a merged parish consisting of the churches in Medemblik, Andijk, Onderijk and Wervershoof. This merger was created last year.
Because a full church, you don’t see that every weekend in West Friesland. There are too few believers, so that the church benches remain empty. That number continues to shrink, and therefore Close churches, forced, their doors.
In the Sint-Martinuskerk in Medemblik, designated as ‘Hoofdkerk’, it was busy at the end of March. There the bishop of the Noord-Holland diocese came to install Álvaro Rodríguez Luque as a pastor. The church was full of parishioners for the special moment. “But that is not always a case,” says De Boer.
A closer community
The 35-year-old Rodríguez Luque, a born Spaniard from Córdoba, is now the new pastor for parish Sint-Titus Brandsma.
He is someone who is known in the region. Since 2017 he has also served as a pastor for the waterfront, a parish located in the western part of West Friesland, to which ten churches are connected.
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