It is very difficult to establish a new oriental parish in a big city like London. First, the Melkite diaspora covers the whole of Greater London, and the parish priest is compelled to travel to every corner of London in order to gather his flock. An English priest in London, Anglican or Catholic, is free of these geographical difficulties, because his parish is confined to one small area. Therefore, he can visit most of his parishioners on foot, and the attendance of the Sunday mass is usually quite high, as people are confined to a single and small area. This privilege of a British parish in London is nonexistent for our oriental diaspora, for the circumstances are completely different. As a result, none of the Eastern Christian priests is able to visit all his parishioners in their homes on a regular basis. A dynamic Eastern priest is unable to visit more than two families a day because of the distance between different locations in Greater London, and most visits are in the evenings or at the weekends. Moreover, the priest has many other things to do in his parish: counselling, weddings, baptisms, funerals, administrative work, and the parish activities for lay Christians.
Second, the experience of Father Shafiq obliges him to forget those who do not show any interest in our parish, in spite of my contact with them over the past twelve years, and to concentrate my efforts on those who do care. They number about 400 parishioners. Details of the number of our Melkite parishioners are almost complete in the parish archives. There are 823 Melkites in Greater London including children. This number represents at least 99% of Melkites within the area of Greater London.
Those who practise their Catholic faith at our Melkite church are about 400 parishioners; the rest can be divided into two categories. One large faction of our people, who gathers around 300 people, is not interested in the spiritual side of the parish but only in its cultural identity, although they describe themselves as Melkites. And one small faction, which gathers around 100 people, behaves like “tourists”, for they attend the liturgy once or twice yearly, especially on Palm Sunday, or on Good Friday and on Easter day.