The Saint Jude Garden of Hope is a new project to create a garden behind the Shrine Office as part of our Annual Fund. Donate here.

Saint Jude is best known as the patron of "desperate" or "difficult" cases (a term used in preference to the older title of "hopeless" cases, since with God no situation is hopeless). To us, Saint Jude is the patron saint of hope in Jesus Christ. 

As our friend Fr Nicholas King, SJ wrote in a recent reflection for the Shrine: 

”Hope is a strange Christian attitude, but incredibly important. It places us between the now and the not-yet. Can you remember all the way back to Pre-Virus, when we had never heard of Corona (or Zoom, for that matter)? Do you recall how simple things were then, in contrast to this extraordinary moment when it is suddenly no longer possible to plan, and all we can do is live one day at a time? So “hope” is what gets us through the darkness; and it is not the same as being “optimistic”. Our source of hope is not the gloomy insight that “things can’t possibly get any worse; so they must get better”. Rather it is the entirely cheerful certainty that God has raised Jesus from the dead, so everything is all right, no matter how dark things may appear”. 

Thus, this new place will be a garden of hope. No matter how dark things may appear – there is always hope.

All those who donate will have their name listed in the garden.

“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures." – Francis Bacon

We are working on the gardens at the moment (see what it looks like before we started below), and the Garden of Hope will be officially opened by the Mayor of Faversham in September. It will not be open to visits until October.