87: The things that guide me: The example of the saints, the rosary, the sacraments.

Episode 87 John Patrick talks about the importance of his roots in a parish in Mossend, Scotland - and in his Irish and Lithuanian heritage. He describes how he and his cousin, Brian, 'fell into' setting up a media company to 'present the Church and the faith...the fullness of truth, faith and reason, but also the joy of being a Catholic.' Ten years on, John Patrick explains what he thinks makes an authentic social media presence for sharing the faith, starting with, 'You have to just not be afraid.'  

Important  links:

All Kinds of Catholic: A Gathering

Newsletter sign-up: All Kinds of Catholic on Substack

Find out more about Sancta Familia Media and find them on Instagram

A new episode, a different conversation, every Wednesday!
Email me: theresa@KindsofCatholic.co.uk

Subscribe to receive our newsletter and be part of the All Kinds of Catholic Community: Click here

On Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky X/Twitter @KindsofCatholic
Find episode transcripts: https://kindsofcatholic.buzzsprout.com

The podcast is kindly supported by the Passionists of St Patrick's Province, Ireland & Britain and by CAFOD.

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times. I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations. Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free. That web address is in the episode notes too, and I'd love you to draw closer to our community. Thank you. 

Thanks so much to those listeners and guests who've already signed up to come to our in-person event on Saturday the 21st of March. Have a look at the episode notes for a link to find out more about the event and do join us if you're able to. It would be really lovely to see you there in person. Just as a reminder, it'll be an opportunity for us to continue our conversations in-person and we'll make an episode of the podcast there live so you can see that conversation as it takes place. We'll have a simple lunch together and we'll have a time of prayer. So that's Saturday the 21st of March. 

Let's get on with today's conversation. Listeners, thanks for tuning in today. I'm joined by John Patrick, who is somebody up in Scotland this time. So we're going have a really good conversation. We're going to think about some social media along the way. So welcome, John Patrick. 

Thank you for having us on. It’s a pleasure.

 So before we get into the media work that you do - we'll talk about that in some detail because I think it's really interesting for listeners to hear a bit about. What about you as a person then? Can you just give us a bit of a flavour of, have you always been a Catholic? What kind of age did your faith really begin to mean something to you? 

I come from a very Catholic background. We have been raised in a family in North Lanarkshire in a town called Mossend, which is almost like a crucible of Irish-Lithuanian immigration. So the Irish and Lithuanians came to Scotland towards the turn of the century, there past, and they brought with them their faith. So really having my ancestors, my grandparents, from Lithuania and Ireland has imbued in me that sense of Catholic culture, which has always been there. Also a deep sense of faith and the life of the faith has always been part of everything that I've done ever since I can remember. 

Now that's really interesting. I did not know about Lithuanian heritage in Scotland. So that's very interesting to think about. But  I was just saying to you before we started recording that the social media work you do I think it really captures Catholic culture. I can really recognise Catholic people, real Catholic people living real Catholic lives. And so it's really interesting that you feel you've grown up in that environment and maybe that helps you to express it so clearly. Tell us a little bit about this Lithuanian side then in your heritage. Is there anything that people might find different about practices in your family? 

Well, I suppose maybe in other parts of the United Kingdom it might be more something that’s rare. Certainly in Moss End, the town I'm from, is known as Little Lithuania because 6,000 families came, or 6,000 individuals came, around the turn of the century there. And we still have the Lithuanian Social Club; we still have many parishioners at our church who are Lithuanian descent. My grandmother was from a place called Carfin. It's famous for its grotto, Carfin Grotto. And she married my grandfather there who was Irish descent. So, the great grandparents were from a town in Lithuania which I visited actually in 2008 and met up with family, long lost cousins and relatives there and saw the graves of my ancestors. They were all very much involved in their church there as well. The church is actually, the town is in the part of Lithuania which is called the Suwalki Corridor. Now that's been a lot in the news just now because that is the corridor that is between Belarus and Kaliningrad Exclave or Russia. But that's always been historically a kind of territory which has passed hands a lot of times. So the mixing of cultures is there. My great grandmother spoke five languages. She spoke Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, English and German. So it's always been a kind of cross point and I'm very proud of my heritage but also very proud of how they came here and managed to successfully integrate into the society and community here and become great members of the church and community at large. 

That's wonderful to hear about. I feel quite moved. And I think there's something too about  - one of the things I really love about being Catholic is that it is international. There's Catholic people all over the world and we all belong in this one Church. So it's lovely to hear about heritages that kind of cross borders.  And now what about this work that you do then, this media work that you do with your cousin? So just share a little bit about how you -  I mean, did you plot a course into it or did you fall into it?  

We fell into it. Talking about the parish; we've always been involved in our parish, my cousin Brian and I. We were altar servers there, made our sacraments there, my parents got married there. So, I still live in the parish.  At that point in time, we were growing up, we had a lot of fun messing around making silly videos. Comedy sketches, things like that, just playing about with cameras as a hobby. Around that point in time, before 2009, we had talked to our parish priest about doing a history video for the parish to mark the 125th. So that really involved a lot of work for us. We interviewed a lot of parishioners. We interviewed some famous parishioners, famous footballers, et cetera. And that led to this DVD, which was very, very successfully received. So a lot of people were wanting that kind of replicated. But at that point in time, Brian and myself were going on different paths. We were going to university. I went to university to study languages and Brian went to university to study computing. So kind of everything went on hold for a bit. I was traveling abroad. I was working abroad, living abroad. And then we came back and got graduate jobs, different jobs we were doing. But we always were involved with the parish. And at that point in time, Facebook was kicking off. So the parish priest suggested that we would maybe get involved with that and set something up. And it was from there that we started making more content and putting it online. And very suddenly the popularity of it increased so much that people in the local area wanted us to come and cover some events there, wanted us to film events. We're talking 2015 here. After about a year into 2016, we decided that we couldn't no longer work and do this at the same time because we were spending every weeknight editing and filming and weekends. We just simply couldn't balance the jobs. So we thought, you know, we're still young. We're in our mid-twenties. We'll go for it. We'll quit our jobs and see what happens. If it doesn't work out, well, it doesn't work out. But here we are, 10 years this year, we're still doing it. So something's worked out well.

Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. You know, it's really good to hear. I mean, I don't know if it's just because of what I'm doing, but it's good to hear somebody managing to do something sustainable that is, you know, sharing the mission of the church and providing you with some income, I guess, or some way of just making ends meet.

 Yeah, exactly. 

That it's not all voluntary work. So tell us a bit about then how it does work and what kind of thing you do for listeners who aren't familiar. And just to say it's Sancta Familia Media. And is there a reason why you chose that name? 

Yeah, we did. So our page, our media group, was called Sancta Familia Media. Sancta Familia is Latin for Holy Family.  And that's why we chose it. Simply because our parish is called Holy Family. We thought we'd have a name that wouldn't be linked entirely to the parish, a bit separate to give us more scope. So we called it Sancta Familia. And from there, we offered commissions to film events, conferences, weddings. We did interviews. We did news coverage. And from that point in time, really, from filming those events, more people got to know us. The page grew massively. I think we're one of the most followed social media in the United Kingdom and Ireland. So people, when they want things out there, they come to us to get their news out there, their event out there, all their coverage out there. So that's really kind of been the model. Up until COVID, that was the model. Then from there, we kind of pivoted more towards streaming things. So a lot of our kind of bulk of our work now is streaming live things. We've invested a lot in that equipment as well as other areas of work we do. So it's a tricky balance to make it work, yes, but it's something we are still surviving and thriving, you could say. 

And I know part of your work is filming funerals, which is really interesting because a friend and I were just talking some little while ago and she said to me, Isn't it strange that we don't film funerals? You know, it might be a nice thing for families to look back on. And just then I saw that that is something that you do and actually, you know, that is something that people can have. So tell us a bit about what happens when you film somebody's funeral. 

Well, it's funny though, just as an aside, back to the Lithuanian culture, they would normally take pictures of the corpse. 

Italian people too. 

So I've got lot of albums of pictures of dead people. I mean, I can understand the rationale. This is the last chance they've got to photograph the person. This is the last chance to send that to family members for closure. So in a similar vein, we approached that funeral situation - thought at first this is rather strange, we're filming funerals. It's a sad occasion; you don't want to remember it. But very quickly, you know, we've noticed over the last five years of doing it, that people are so grateful for it.  Not just because they can't be there perhaps in person, they might be abroad or they may be sick or something like that. But the fact that they can, when their head is calmed down and everything is quieter in their lives, they can watch back the funeral Mass, they can reflect on the homily, they can reflect on the tributes that have been paid and it gives them great comfort. So we've found it very moving. We've covered, you know, your podcast is called All Kinds of Catholics. We've filmed the funerals of all kinds of Catholics from toddlers to the very old, from the very great to the very least.  And they all have one thing in common at funerals, and the Catholic funeral, is that it's full of hope. It shows our equality for God as individuals and as sons and daughters of God when you go to the Catholic funeral. Because we're all going to go up the same way. No matter for a landed gentry or a pauper. Our mortal remains return to the church and we present them before God, asking for His mercy. 

That’s wonderful. I'm really glad to have a chance to talk about that with you, John, because I've seen some of the work, because you sometimes put a little bit on social media of those funerals and  you do it so respectfully and even though I don't know the person, I feel moved at the  respectful way in which we mark somebody's passing in the church and the beautiful, like you say, the hope and the prayers and people gathering to be there for the family and to send off this person to stand before God in their time. There's something wonderful about it and it is nice to have it captured in film and I agree with you. I'm sure people are really glad to be able to look back at it later when they feel stronger. So that's beautiful work. And I wonder whether, I mean, I think you've already alluded there a little bit. I wonder whether, does it make a difference to how you feel about death now? Some of us can really try and avoid thinking about death, but actually you're there with grieving families, you know, quite often? 

Yes. Actually, you know, having worked with a lot of undertakers now as well over this period, you realise they're the happiest people you can meet because the closer you live to the realisation that our time on this earth is finite, the more emphasis you have on living the day to day in every moment. What really is put in perspective is what's precious. So you know, you hear all these great stories about people's achievements and what they did in life. What it boils down to is what kind of person you were in life, not just what you did, but also who you were and how you behaved and how you acted towards others. I always find no matter what people do, I get inspired by someone's life and by their death and by the way that they lived their life to do better in my own every single day. 

Very good. So that's some of the funding work that you do and I think we've demonstrated that you're not doing it in a flippant way, that it's very meaningful, good work for Catholic people. But tell us about the social media then that this frees you up to do because some of that is much more overtly light-hearted, isn't it? 

Yeah, what we try and do at Sancta is try and present the Church and the faith in a way which is not just sensible and clearly teaches what the Church wants to transmit as in the fullness of truth, faith and reason, but also the joy of being a Catholic. We want to try and transmit that joy and we try and do that, we think we do that. And one of the things which is wonderful about the work is we cover so many different areas of the church. Many people might be stuck in a small parish, in a small town, in a small congregation, but we get the chance to go beyond our own parish, which is great, but to other churches, other groups, travel abroad and meet all sorts of different lives of Catholics. each one of them are inspiring and it's incredible. You know, the Church has so much depth to it, so much passion to it that, you know, I wish I could just - as I say, I try my best to do that. I wish I could show everyone what I see and that's what I try and do.

Well, that resonates with what I'm doing too in this podcast, All Kinds of Catholic, as you say, because I just think it's really encouraging for us to find Catholic people beyond our own parish and our own town and, you know, what we might see in the newsletter and things to actually meet people through digital means. Who are Catholics in completely different environments, living the faith where they find themselves. It is encouraging for us, it, and affirming in our faith? 

Well, it is absolutely affirming. And I've lived through 10 years now of doing this, covering this, and I've seen so many things. Things that have moved me immensely, you know, from just thinking off the of my head: We had a Rosary round the entire coast of the United Kingdom in 2017. That was an amazing event we were involved in organising. We had the relics tour of St. Thérèse in 2019 around Scotland, which was just sensational. And then COVID, and that allowed us to pivot towards kind of more an online expression of some faith, but also one which moved us to show how much people still relied on faith. And then after the pandemic, we got to return to Church and a kind of increase in interest from Gen Z, young Catholics, and in faith practice, that kind of longing for it. And then the historic events of last year of Pope Francis' death, his funeral, which we covered and then the election of Pope Leo, we were there as well. So it's been an insane year 2025, for us. We're very happy to have been involved in it. It feels like we've seen so much that what do we do next? 

 Well, just pause for a moment while you're doing social media, which gets a really, really good following. Maybe you could share a few pearls of wisdom then for people listening who might be in charge of the Facebook page for their parish or maybe have bigger plans, but people who are not sure how best to share the gospel using social media. What kind of themes would you say are important to focus on? 

I often think when people ask for advice on social media, it always kind of goes from a kind of guarded position of what do we not say, what do we not do? Oh, don't - avoid this. I think you have to just not be afraid and just be authentic. Just put yourself out there and say, This is what's happening in our community. Get a phone, everyone's got a phone. Take a shot of something, take a shot of someone doing something, a volunteer doing something. Get to know the personalities involved. I think the biggest strength that Brian and I have is we've put our personalities kind of out there and, you know, I'm not bothered really about what people think of me, which is maybe one of the benefits, but that allows people to grow with us. So over the last 10 years, people have come to know us personally, also online, and they identify with our journey and also our journey of faith. So when it comes to people who have parish pages, get to know the personalities involved, show that the Church is not just posting a bullet with Mass times, show the faces who go to church, show the stories and show that it's a lived experience, not just some cold dark building people go up to.

 That's great. There's two things there that I might just respond to. One is that I think maybe there's something about it being you and Brian who know each other so well, that has helped you to really show your personalities. I wonder what you think about that. And also I think there's something about, I think what comes across in your social media is that you're very,  I don't want to say convinced, what do I mean? You're very comfortable in your faith. You're very comfortable and so you can be yourself because you're not trying to hide behind some sort of glossy, perfect Catholic, whatever that might be.  

Yeah, we're certainly not perfect Catholics, let’s put that out. We use the word practising Catholics because that's what we are. Practising. We're trying to be living our faith as best as we can. We're all sinners, we all fail, but we have the Sacraments to help us too every week, every month, to improve and grow in that journey. But you're right in saying that, Brian's been an indispensable help to me and I'm sure I've been to him as well. In terms of our personalities, we are different. I mean, Brian wouldn't be the one to go on a podcast so much. It's not really his thing. He's more behind the camera, more technical. He can do it when he wants to do it, but I'm probably the that does more of the talking. for better or worse. So we do play off each other quite well. And it does work as a kind of balance of technical aspects, outgoing aspects. 

And maybe there's something about being family as well that, you know, your family, we often hear celebrities saying don't we, that their family keeps them grounded. If they were going to get a bit carried away with their fame, that actually there's something about family members that just keep us real. 

One of the things that we always find really important and real - is we've been based in our parish centre ever since we started. We wouldn't really dream of going to somewhere else. We use this space, it’s a small space, not far from our house. It's not in a glamorous part of Lanarkshire, it's not in a glamorous part of Glasgow, but it's something that connects us to the living community we've got here and the roots that we have here. And it's something we're very proud of. Our parish is really quite an incredible place. So it's something which keeps us grounded but also keeps us focussed on what we're about. 

Lots of listeners to this podcast will be in England and Wales. Not all, actually, there are listeners all over the world, but lots of people are in England and Wales, but you're in Scotland. So tell us a bit about, do you get any kind of feel for how the church might be different in Scotland, the Catholic Church? 

This is an interesting question, but one thing I do reflect upon a lot, we have done a lot of work in England. We've covered a lot of events in England and different parishes up and down the country there. One of the great highlights last year was the We Believe Festival in Oscott which was, I don't know if you were there yourself?

Yeah

Which was a really incredible weekend and that kind of showed us the breadth of the faith in England and what's going well. I would say the faith in Scotland and England is different slightly. It feels like, maybe for rightly or wrongly, that the faith in England is much more of middle-class affair. Maybe that's not the case in some parts of the North, I'm not sure, but I feel that it tends to be more, in essence, more middle class, perhaps more guided by immigrants as well, numbers-wise. Whereas in Scotland, where I come from, in the diocese of Motherwell, it's this Irish/Eastern European diaspora who have very much taken on Scottish skin. But it's also a kind of ex-working class community where we have always been kind of under the cosh, you could say, in terms of Scottish society. I think there’s probably less bigotry, less sectarianism in England than it has been in the West of Scotland historically as well. So we have that kind of mentality where, rightly or wrongly, it's added to this sort of camaraderie that we have, which maybe does not feel quite the same as an identity in England, as it would have with Catholics.  Again, I'm just generalising, but that's my observation. 

Thank you. Your observations are valuable. That's good. I think there are parts of the Church in England that are quite middle class. I think people's experience is perhaps variable, but yeah, I think that's really interesting to hear how it strikes you. It's always good to hear from somebody looking in. And then we're kind of working to the end of the conversation, John. So maybe you could give us a flavour then of, I mean, you're in a lucky position to see the Church in so many different guises around Britain and around the world by the sound of it. So what is it for you though, for your own faith? What are the prayers that maybe you would reach for or bits of scripture that really stay with you? 

Well, I've all been guided by my grandmother, my nana, Brian's nana as well, who went to Lourdes over 50 times. And she also had a great devotion to St. Thérèse the Little Flower, which is also intrinsically involved with Carfin Grotto where we worked, you know, that national shrine there. So St. Thérèse and Our Lady of Lourdes and the rosary are very much part of our spiritual life. They're very much part of my spiritual life. As well as Adoration and Confession are. I try and promote Confession as much as I can. It's a very beautiful sacrament, underused by many. These kinds of things, the bread-and-butter tools that we've been given by the Church to live our lives, the example of the saints, the rosary, the sacraments, these are the things that guide me. They're not any kind of magic: Look at me, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. I just use what's there for me. I love the saints; I'm inspired by Saints. We're right now involved in opening a cause in Motherwell Diocese, our own diocese, of a young man called Joe Wilson who died at 17 and his cause is going to the Vatican after the Scottish bishops approved that a few months ago. So that's something which will be more in the wider Catholic anglosphere news soon enough. Kind of a similar vein to Pedro Ballester who was the Opus Dei boy from Manchester and Clare Crockett in Northern Ireland. So we're having these young saints appear and I find great strength from that personally; these examples of holiness and trying to emulate what they did in their lives. 

Thank you. And for listeners you may notice that will be two weeks in a row now that St. Thérèse of Lisieux has got a special mention so that's good. I think that reflects, you know, what you've said there reflects growing up immersed in Catholic culture and finding those main Catholic cultural tools as you say absolutely valuable.

Absolutely. 

In today's world. So you mentioned that you're at all sorts of funerals. You must see many different styles of celebrating a funeral Mass. And I wonder about Mass on a Sunday then, do you have a preferred kind of music you like to hear or are you big on incense or not big on incense? What kind of thing speaks to you? 

I would say I kind of more veer towards the traditional side of things, but yeah, I tend Novus Ordo in my parish here, which is done very well, I have to say. It's been - the liturgy in our parish, we've been spoiled by. We have a good choir and we tend to do a mix of modern and also traditional hymns. So that kind of, kind of half-way is quite nice. Would I like to see more chant and more reverence with altar rails and things? Yeah, I think so. I think that'd be very important going forward for the Church, but it's something that will happen in time, I think, when you see the kind of trend towards that kind of area of reverence. And it's certainly improved a lot in 10 years since I've been around in the media since. 

That is really interesting because I think it would be easy to think somebody who's all over social media is modern in a kind of perhaps shaking off some of those roots way, but actually you bring those things together. 

Yeah, they coexist very well in terms of my faith because first of all, the way we transmit the gospel is always new. The gospels are very ancient, always new. And the way we do that has always been with the latest techniques, whether it's a printing press, whether it's scrolls, whether it's stained glass windows. And now we have social media, a great gift to use, a great tool. But that doesn't mean that the liturgy, which is the timeless expression of the Church's faith, should change because we know that in fact that when we see something that's authentic and true, it gives that attraction to people who want that, something that's different from the world. You go to church, we are a part of the world, but to be lifted out of it. That reality of heaven meets earth on the altar. You want the liturgy to reflect that and be sincere in it. Even right down to how our buildings look, how our churches look. Beautiful churches transmit timeless messages. I've always been that way. I've always seen it. These elements of traditional faith have always been more attractive on media because they are aesthetically much more pleasing but also attractive to this sense of mystery we have inside us.

Thank you. Thank you, John Patrick. I'm glad I asked you about that. I think that's been really interesting. Thanks ever so much, John Patrick, for finding some time to talk. I know that this kind of work is keeping you really busy. So it's been great to hear from you today. I think there's a lot there that people can reflect on and that will resonate with people who will have lots of things in common with what you're saying. But also I think there's lots there to, like you say, lift us out of our everyday lives and contemplate heaven meeting earth in our conversations and in the media that we choose to look at. So I'll put some links to your work in the episode notes so people who aren't familiar can have a look and I'd recommend that you do that listeners. Okay. Thanks ever so much. 

Thank you.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you.  A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. You can also follow us on social media @kindsofCatholic and remember if you connect with us on Substack you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there.  Until the next time.