The Website of St. Cassian's Centre, Kintbury

In addition to retreat work for school groups from Year 10, Year 11 and Sixth Form, St Cassian's at Kintbury does provide a few weekend retreats for Confirmation Groups from parishes or deaneries. In these retreats:

• we do not attempt to provide Confirmation 'instruction'. We offer an opportunity for the young people and their catechists to reflect on their lives in the context of Confirmation.
• we want to provide a good 'process' and good 'experience' for the catechists and the young people: good quality of presentations adapted to their age: agood experience of small group work, appropriate to the age of the young people and enabling the catechists to relate well to the young people in this environment.
• we want to help to bring the group together: this will be different depending on whether the group is all from one parish, on whether most attend the same school or come from a variety of schools, andat what stage of their preparation they are.
• we want to provide them with a good experience of (a friendly) God, of prayer, of liturgy
• we want to make room for anything the parishes would particularly like included
• we want to give the young people a better understanding of themselves andof their self worth; to boost their self confidence
• we want to help the young people to have a good experience of building community, so that they can do this in their parishes and other groups they are involved with.

To help us to help you achieve these goals, we ask you to consider the following before contacting us:

• how voluntary is the young people's attendance ? (on the programme and at Kintbury)
• what are the ages of the young people ?
• are they mostly from one school, or many ? (Catholic schools ?)
• at what stage of the confirmation programme is this retreat taking place ?
• are there things the parish wants us to include, or things they are having particular difficulty with ?

If you are a parish priest or catechist and wish to know more about bringing a group here for a retreat, please do make contact with us.