New resident takes Lambeth Palace to pre- Reformation days

A consecrated woman from a French religious community is to become the first Catholic to live in Lambeth Palace since the Reformation, writes Abigail Frymann.

According to an announcement this week from Lambeth Palace, she is Ula Michlowicz, one of four members of Chemin Neuf  – a Catholic foundation with an ecumenical vocation – who are moving into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London headquarters.

Other members are Oliver Matri, a German Lutheran in training for ministry; and a married Anglican couple, Ione and Alan Morley-Fletcher, the movement’s national leader. They will all live in accommodation within the grounds of Lambeth Palace.

While Catholics have worked in Lambeth as staff, it is thought that Polish-born Sr Ula will be the first Catholic to reside there since the Reformation.

The Chemin Neuf members are taking up space left vacant by the departure of sisters from the Anglican Community of the Holy Name who served at Lambeth Palace from the 1990s, and others from the Order of the Holy Paraclete who arrived in the 1980s. One remaining sister, a member of the contemplative Sisters of the Love of God who has lived there for two years, is also planning to leave. Lambeth Palace said that from January 2014 they will share in daily prayer with Archbishop Justin Welby and “further the ecumenical and international dimensions of his work”.

Archbishop Welby has had a close association with Chemin Neuf in the past. The group has also recently been handed the running of Catholic parish of Christ the King, Cockfosters, north London.