Super-confessors arrive in Scotland

POPE FRANCIS has sent six Missionaries of Mercy, with special dispensation to absolve the most serious sins, to Scotland.

They are among priests who were commissioned by the Pope at a ceremony in Rome on Ash Wednesday and assigned to countries around the world to celebrate the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

One of them, Fr Peter Damian-Grint, an Opus Dei priest from Glasgow, said that he hoped to restore a sense of encounter with Christ, adding: “I have to receive mercy from God, otherwise I can’t give mercy. God never tires of forgiving; we just tire of asking.”

Fr Damian-Grint also said that while hearing confessions would be central to the men’s mission, they had been told to preach about God’s mercy.

The other priests involved are Fr Ross Campbell of the University of Glasgow Chaplaincy, Fr Ross Crichton of St Mary’s, Benbecula, in the Outer Hebrides; Fr Robert Kane of St Teresa’s, Newarthill, in North Lanarkshire; and Fr Tom Monaghan from St Cadoc’s, Newton Mearns, near Glasgow.

Fr Michael John Galbraith of St James’s, St Andrews, was not able to attend the ceremony in Rome but will receive his charge of mission from the apostolic nuncio. They are among more than 1,100 priests blessed at the Vatican to give absolution normally reserved to the Holy See for sins which include desecration of the Eucharist and breaking the seal of the confessional.

Meanwhile, Mgr Brian McGee was installed as the eleventh Bishop of Argyll and the Isles at St Columba’s Cathedral in Oban on Thursday last week. Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh welcomed Bishop McGee as a follower of St Columba, an “island soldier” whose successors had become the “undisputed religious and moral leaders of the people”, commanding centuries of respect across Europe.