Abba Seraphim formally launched the upgraded British Orthodox Church website on St. George’s Day. Before introducing the new website he felt it was important to recall the enormous significance and advance of electronic resources over the past few years. The British Orthodox Church’s first venture in this respect came in 1995 through its membership of Copt-Net, “a universal Coptic Fellowship for the Computer Age” but soon developed with encouragement from Shenouda Mamdouh in Cairo, who began the first Computer Department at the Coptic Patriarchate, and Father Peter Farrington – then a layman – who built the first British Orthodox website and has sustained it through many “makeovers” since then. Abba Seraphim wanted to express his appreciation and emphasise the debt of gratitude the Church owes to these pioneers whose technical skills and knowledge were a vital and enriching part of our ministry. As Father Peter’s commitments have grown it has been necessary to relieve him of these responsibilities and to restructure the website to enable the content management to be shared by a number of people rather than left to a single person.

Thanks to Trevor Maskery and ChromexStudios the new website looks very attractive and combines many of the best features of the former site with new ones, especially the scope for video talks and an enlarged picture gallery. The centralising of individual church events should make these details readily accessible and we hope to encourage local communities to contribute more effectively to the site as a whole.

On 15 April Abba Seraphim was at St. Anne’s Hospital, South Tottenham, a centre for inpatient mental health care in Haringey, to visit Keith Watson, a reader at the Charlton parish. Keith has suffered from health problems for most of his adult life and has been cared for at St. Anne’s on a number of occasions. He took with him the good wishes and assurance of prayers from the clergy and faithful at Charlton.

Abba Seraphim chaired a meeting at the Church Secretariat on 14 April 2010 to discuss practical ways of assisting Coptic asylum seekers and to explore the possibility of establishing a charitable trust to fund some legal support and guidance. Following discussions Abba Seraphim gave his blessing for provisional plans to establish such a trust to be placed under the patronage of Archangel Michael.

On 10 April 2010, Abba Seraphim made his first visit to the British Orthodox Mission at Portsmouth in its present venue at St. Faith’s Church in Craswell Street, Portsmouth, where he celebrated the Divine Liturgy and preached. As it was the Saturday in Bright Week, Abba Seraphim preached on the theme of the Resurrection. Afterwards, there was a buffet luncheon, during which Abba Seraphim announced that following the growth in membership he was raising the ministry at Portsmouth from a mission to that of a parish.

At the end of Holy Week, the British Orthodox parishes all celebrated the Feast of the Resurrection (4 April) with enthusiasm. This year Holy Pascha coincided with the western Easter so we received few ecumenical visitors, although attendance overall in all parishes was very good. The clergy also reported that the Holy Week services were well supported. Abba Seraphim officiated at Babingley, where the mild weather enabled the procession to go round the outside of the church; whilst at Bournemouth torrential rain made this impossible. However, for the traditional requiem service and visiting of the graves of former church members at Wimborne Road cemetery the next morning, there was a good gathering. Dyed eggs and other traditional Paschal foods were also included in the festivities, whilst “Christ is Risen!” was repeated in English, Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Romanian, Amharic and other tongues.