Knights of St. Columba Council 180 Grantham.
The Knights of St. Columba were founded in Glasgow in 1919, and is the largest lay apostolate organisation in Great Britain, with well over 12,000 members, spread over 500 councils or local units, from Aberdeen to the Channel Islands. Grantham Council No 180 being one of the local units, together with Lincoln Council 142, Scunthorpe Council 211, and Newark Council 333, when brought together forms a Province. The Province of Lincolnshire. Each Province has an elected head, elected annually within the four councils mentioned. He is called the Provincial Grand Knight, each council has it own elected head again annually elected by its members and is called the Grand Knight of Council who is directly responsible to the Provincial Grand knight, or PGK, who in turn is answerable to his superiors the board of directors chaired by their elected Head, the Supreme Grand Knight, More information about us nationally can be found on www.ksc.org.uk.
So what do the Knights do?
Quite simply we are an organised body of practising Catholic gentlemen who will assist the Church whenever and wherever we are needed. We have full recognition by all Bishops and Priests, right to the Holy Father Himself. We give our loyalty and commitment when ever required.
We are not in competition with any other Catholic organisation - in fact we often work with them. Here in Grantham more than half our members are involved as ministers of the Eucharist, alter servers, others are in the Parish Council, with one member at present carrying out his duties of Civic Leader of Grantham Council. We hold and take part in many other activities, with any monetary profits gained enables us to support local and national charities.
Just to name a few actions, we hold our annual bike ride for our National action project, we organise an annual Christmas draw, we organise with other churches Christmas posters, with a main aim in keeping Christ in Christmas. During a weekend in May the Knights of Grantham together with other churches, help to distribute and collect for Christian aid. Our latest endeavour being, we organised a coach for our parishioners to visit the Holy relics of St. Therese which visited St. Barnabas Cathedral Nottingham. These are but just a few activities mentioned undertaken by the Grantham Knights there are many more actions undertaken daily involving the Grantham Council.
We are certainly not a secret society; of course we have our rules and regulations like any other organisation, we wear Collarets which is part of our tradition, which identifies with a particular office that we undertake as individuals. We are a strongly fraternal group, and we do help our fellow Knight when they experience personal difficulties. There are again various actions taken that if mentioned would over fill this web page.