It was with sadness and regret that I received messages from my Scottish friends informing me of the closure of St Francis' RC parish in Dundee, Scotland.

St Francis' parish, known among the Catholic community of Dundee simply as The Friary, used to be a Franciscan parish run by the friars until Bishop Vincent Logan of Dunkeld appointed Irish-born priest Fr Eugene O'Sullivan as its first diocesan parish priest in the 1980s.

Through the intervention of Joe Magro, a Maltese doctor from Valletta who has been living in the UK for more than 20 years, Fr O'Sullivan began to invite priests from Malta and Gozo to stand in for him as he took his summer holidays. The first Maltese priest to visit St Francis's was Fr Raymond Bonnici Ofm Cap., who was succeeded by various other Maltese and Gozitan priests; Fr Joseph Mercieca of Victoria was the first Gozitan priest to visit.

I had the opportunity of serving the parish as a student-priest from 2005 to 2007 while also studying in Scotland and, therefore, St Francis' was "home" to me for quite a significant period of time. After I left Scotland, the parish was run by Polish Palottine priests.

The parish will close on August 15 when Mass will be said for the last time in its church.

Thus, one of the busiest parishes in the city of Dundee will come to its end, bringing with it the end of an era for many Dundonian Catholics and Irish students who have frequented St Francis' either because it was their native parish or while studying in the sunniest city of Scotland.

The decision in favour of the parish's closure has been made due to financial reasons.