On Sunday August 4th, the following announcement was made by the Churchwardens, Sarah Grimes and Dawn Claxton, at both the 8 am and 10 am services.
“We are pleased to announce that Bishop Andrew Asbil, Bishop of Toronto, has appointed the Rev. Rory Honeyghan to the office of Priest-in-Charge of St. Paul’s Newmarket, effective Sunday September 1st, 2024.
Rev. Rory will be coming to Newmarket with his wife and his two young sons, ages 6 and 9.
Rev. Rory was ordained a priest in 2011, and has served in several different parishes in both Jamaica and Guyana. He is currently the priest in the parish of St. Matthew’s Claremont, in St. Ann, Jamaica, which is about a 45-minute drive south of Ocho Rios. Rev. Rory and his family will be making the move to Canada and settling in Newmarket. They will need a lot of support as they make the adjustment to their new parish, their new home and their new country, but we are confident that the people of St. Paul’s will do whatever we can to make them feel at home and welcome.
While the announcement of a new priest is very exciting, we also recognize that it brings with it, some anxiety and concern. However, your wardens feel confident that Rev. Rory will be a good fit for St. Paul’s. Back in October, at our Town Hall Meeting, you gave us a list of attributes that you wanted to see in a new priest, and Rev. Rory checks off all of those boxes.
We, along with Marlene Shruiff, your past warden, had a very lengthy conversation with Rev. Rory, via Zoom, and we came away with a very positive vibe and the feeling that we were being led to Rev. Rory, and that he, in turn, was being called by God, to serve the people of St. Paul’s. As we learned later from the Bishop, Rev. Rory reported feeling the exact the same way.
So, we take this leap of faith, as we have done before, and we follow God’s path, trusting that He is indeed, as we say in our prayer each week, “sending us a faithful servant who will care for His people and support us in our ministries to be a Beacon of Hope in Newmarket. Amen”
