This book presents a selection of the best of the weekly 'Pastor Iuventus' columns from The Catholic Herald. Arranged over a year, the columns give us a true-life picture of the ministry of a parish priest in a busy city. The diary convincingly conveys the tangible and day-to-day reality of a priest's life and work. The journal is about the endless fascinations of parish life: the highs and lows, births and deaths, new challenges, and, amongst all these, the quiet presence of God. The author tells it as it is, with candour and insight, but also with humour and brilliance. Through the everyday life of the parish, the local hospital and the school, we are given an intimate portrayal of real life. The reader will be moved and inspired by the beauty and depth of these weekly columns. As the year unfolds, the journal reminds us of the closeness of the Providence of God to every human life. As Dr William Oddie says in the Foreword to the first edition, Father Allain's diary column provides readers with "an often vivid inside track on the spiritual life of a parish priest, in a way which certainly conveys its pressures and difficulties, but which also nurtures the spiritual imagination of its readers by demonstrating that those pressures and difficulties can always - with a simple and basic faith in the realities of a working Catholic spirituality - be withstood and transcended." Fr Dominic Allain was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Southwark. Now the International Pastoral Director for 'Grief to Grace' - a programme which brings spiritual and psychological healing to survivors of sexual and other abuse (www.grieftograceuk.org), he also works as a retreat giver and spiritual director. This book draws on his experiences as a parish priest and hospital chaplain in the London area. He is well-known to many through his weekly columns, 'Pastor Iuventus', in The Catholic Herald.