Bishop praises EU as Ukip rows with priest

BRITAIN NEEDS to be part of a reforming European Union, the bishop with responsibility for European affairs said this week in the wake of the electoral gains by the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip).

Bishop William Kenney said that the EU had kept the peace for 60 years and was “worth fighting for”, and that issues such as immigration, poverty and employment were better addressed working with other countries.

“I honestly think there is a message there – the EU needs reforming from within,” said the bishop, who represents the English and Welsh hierarchy at Comece – the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community. “But I don’t see how getting out of it changes anything for the better.”

In last week’s elections for the European Parliament Ukip won nearly 28 per cent of the British vote – the largest share – while in France the anti-Europe Front National, from which Ukip has distanced itself, won a quarter of the French vote.

Before the vote political debate on Europe bubbled over in one parish when a Ukip candidate challenged a priest during Mass. Clive McNally, who last week failed to win a seat on Stratford-upon-Avon district council, stood up and interrupted the priest’s homily at St Mary’s Church, Rhyl, north Wales, to challenge what he described as an “overtly political stance”.

Mr McNally told The Tablet: “I was just compelled to stand up … He had started his homily by going on about how good the EU had been to avoid wars … he went on to say: ‘I would go so far as to say that you couldn’t be a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and vote for Ukip.’ ”

However, Fr Charles Ramsay rejected Mr McNally’s statement, saying: “Mr McNally is either mistaken or disingenuous ... The homily pointed to Robert Schuman, whose vision of the EU based on Catholic Social Teaching had sought to keep peace in a Europe beset by wars. I asked a question of Ukip, albeit a strong one in a homily, in the context of the distance between Ukip policies and the Catholic Social Teaching originally informing the EU.”