Since the restoration of the hierarchy, the Catholic Church in Britain has been sustained by three main groups outlined in the following three articles. The most numerous of these have been people fleeing persecution or economic hardship at home. They have continued to arrive from many nations and have contributed to the varied and rich picture that is the Church today On St Patrick’s Day when she was a youngster, recalls my 91-year-old aunt, the inner-city Catholic churches of her native Liverpool – first port of call in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for those who had left Ireland to seek a better life – would distribute bunches of shamrocks to the faithful. “Every church would do it,” she remembers, “not just St Sylvester’s and St Anth