2024-01-12 15:33:00
Church
published on: 01/12/2024 4:33:00 p.m. – updated: 01/12/2024 5:54:30 p.m.
At 75, the time of retirement has arrived for Father Philippe Goffinet, the dean of the Collegiate Church of Dinant. After 17 years of serving the faithful in Dinant, he passed the torch to a young Polish priest.
The old tenant entrusts the keys to the Collegiate Church to the new tenant. After seventeen years in Dinant, Dean Philippe Goffinet bows out.
It’s still a heartbreak, to the extent that I remained priest-dean of Dinant for 17 years. I was priest of Rivages, of Leffe but also of Anseremme more recently. It was the whole region of central Dinant that I had learned to tame.
At seventy-five years old, the time for retirement has come for Father Goffinet. His successor as parish priest of Dinant is a young Polish priest aged forty-one. Marcin Padowski still has to familiarize himself with his new home and discover parish life in Dinant.
It’s already been a week since I discovered the little chapels and hidden rooms. I still have to learn how to prepare a funeral, baptism or wedding mass. Everything is new to me, even if I had to do the same thing in Ciney and in the small parishes where I was responsible. Here, it’s another way of working.
In office for 17 years
Originally from Florenville in Gaume, Philippe Goffinet, the former dean of Dinant, experienced great moments in the Collegiate Church. In 2014, one hundred years to the day after the sack of Dinant and the massacre of 674 civilians by German forces, King Philippe attended the commemorations in the religious building.
It was the crowning achievement of a century of restoration of this Dinant monument which belongs to everyone. It is not my Collegiate Church, nor that of the Factory, it is that of all the people of Dinant.
After seventeen years of listening to the faithful from Dinant, Father Goffinet had made a place for himself in the hearts of the “Copères”.
It takes a while to tame the Coperas and let them tame themselves. But once the mayonnaise sets, you remain a Copère for life. I still hold on to my Gaumes roots but I was adopted here, in Dinant. It has become my city…
The former dean can now devote himself to his pilgrimages. He will still keep an eye on his former home as an auxiliary priest in Foy Notre-Dame, just a few kilometers from Dinant.
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