CATHOLICS in Lautoka had a reason to celebrate yesterday after the opening of the newly-refurbished Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church.
The famous Lautoka landmark was under renovation for a couple of months by a project team led by architectural project manager John Grey.
He said the $800,000 project was a labour of love inspired by his faith and commitment to the church.
“The project came from my involvement with the faith through an organisation called Couples for Christ which originated here in Lautoka,” he said.
“I have been a part of it for the past 13 years and they remind us that our work in the church is necessary and that we need to support the parish priests in all that is needed.
“We are reminded in the scriptures that faith without action is dead so if you don’t act on your faith, it will be dead.
“Our Archbishop (Peter Loy Chong) has also been reminding us very recently of the pastoral circle which encourages us to see what needs to be done, judge what we need to do and third is to act on it.
“On that basis, I saw the old Lautoka church needed to be renovated.”
He said the new church could now seat about 2000 people.
Archbishop Chong said the Catholic Church had only one church in Lautoka.
“It is a big city and there were only two things we could do, one was either enlarge the church or build a new one,” he said.
“For the time being we went with this option to enlarge the Lautoka Parish and sometime further down we will build a second church.”
