News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

Chartres retires
The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, has announced he is to retire next February after more than 20 years in his post. Bishop Chartres, the 132nd Bishop of London, who is also Dean of HM Chapels Royal, said he would continue with “business as usual” until Christmas, “after which I shall hope to clear my desk of more than twenty years’ worth of accumulated debris”.

His last public engagement as Bishop of London is expected to be at Candlemas. Bishop Chartres, 69, has declined to ordain women as priests in the past. In a 2002 interview with David Frost for the BBC, he said he was “very much pro women priests” and had ordained neither women nor men since becoming Bishop of London “because my principle job is making sure that the diocese of London is united”.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who has attended a number of ecumenical events with Bishop Chartres in the past year, including a service of vespers at Hampton Court, sent a message on Twitter thanking him for his friendship and their warm and fruitful relationship.

Prominent alumni from Heythrop College have written to the Jesuit Provincial and Cardinal Nichols to express their concerns over the failure to negotiate a partnership with Roehampton University that would have secured the institution’s future. Signatories, which included the former Labour MP John Battle and Dame Rachel de Souza, said news that the proposed merger had fallen through was “a significant blow”. For Catholic theology and philosophy to thrive, they said, it needed “a plurality of contexts”. They implored those involved in negotiations to find a new resolve to save Heythrop from closure. To read the letter in full, see p16.

Catholic charities including Nugent Care have welcomed the findings of an inquiry into children’s residential care. The Narey Review, an independent review of the role of children’s homes within the care system, was lead by Sir Martin Narey, the former chief executive of the children’s charity Barnardos. The review concluded that the majority of young people in children’s homes in England were treated overwhelmingly well and should be guaranteed support after they leave. Normandie Wragg, the chief executive of Nugent Care, one of 20 charities visited by the review, said Narey had tackled many of the misconceptions relating to secure care services, which look after very vulnerable and damaged children.


Goodall dies at 84
The diplomat Sir David Goodall, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which laid the groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement, died last week aged 84. After serving prominently in negotiations with the Irish Government over Northern Ireland he became British High Commissioner in India. A Catholic, Goodall attended Ampleforth College, where he learned to paint, and was a governor of Westminster Cathedral Choir School. His obituary will be published in next week’s Tablet.


Teachers convicted of assault
Two former teachers have been convicted of physical and sexual assaults against six boys at St Ninian’s School in Fife more than 30 years ago. John Farrell, 73, of Motherwell, who had served as headmaster of the Christian Brothers institution, for children from troubled backgrounds, was convicted on three charges of sexual abuse and one of physical abuse. His colleague Paul Kelly, 64, of Plymouth, was convicted of sexually and physically abusing two boys and physically abusing a third. On a further 22 charges the verdict was either not guilty or not proven. The charges, which relate to the period between 1978 and 1983, had been levelled at the two men in 2014. This followed a prolonged campaign by one of the victims and an investigation by the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The two men were remanded in custody for sentencing next month. An appeal for bail was refused.

Nightstop, an emergency accommodation network run by the Catholic charity Depaul UK, has appealed for more hosts and revealed that it had to turn away vulnerable young people on 800 occasions last year. Under the scheme hosts provide young homeless people with a bed for the night and a hot meal. According to annual statistics released this week, volunteers provided 13,000 beds and hosted 1,563 people last year. More than half of the young people they served were homeless because of a family breakdown. Head of Nightstop UK Nicola Harwood said: “Now more than ever we need more people to come forward who have a spare room and want to help those in need.”

The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland has announced the appointment of Anthony Horan as the Catholic Church’s new parliamentary office director in Scotland. Mr Horan is currently a senior solicitor with Glasgow City Council. A graduate of the University of Strathclyde who was admitted to the roll of solicitors in 2003, he has also recently served as the Council’s acting legal manager. Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow praised Mr Horan’s “demonstrable knowledge of and commitment to his Catholic faith” which he said would be a “tremendous asset” in his new post.


All Hallows closes
All Hallows College in Dublin has closed. The college, a former seminary, which was a constituent of Dublin City University, had been run by the Vincentians since 1892. It announced its closure in 2014, a short time after a controversial attempt to auction letters between Jackie Kennedy (above) and a Vincentian priest were blocked by her family.

Books written by the Marist theologian Fr Seán Fagan which were withdrawn and destroyed following his censure by the Vatican may appear in print again following his death this month. According to a report in The Sunday Times the silenced priest, who died two weeks ago aged 89, bequeathed the copyright of works such as Does Morality Change? to the theologian Angela Hanley.

In 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith silenced Fr Fagan, ordering him to stop writing articles and books. At one stage, the Marist order bought up all the copies of one of his books and are believed to have pulped them. In 2014, Pope Francis had all sanctions against Fr Fagan lifted after the intervention of a number of people, including the former Irish president Mary McAleese.

Fr Fagan was critical of the Church’s position on mandatory celibacy, women’s ordination and homosexuality. He called for an inquiry into clerical sexual abuse in every diocese in the Irish Church.