News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

Cathedral first
The Anglican Cathedral of Belfast has appointed a Catholic priest to its Cathedral Chapter for the first time in its history. Fr Edward O’Donnell, parish priest of St Brigid’s Church Belfast, has been appointed ecumenical canon at St Anne’s Cathedral.

According to the statutes of the Church of Ireland, “a Cathedral’s Ecumenical Canon may say or sing Morning or Evening Prayer or the Litany; read Holy Scripture; deliver an address and assist at occasional services”. Fr O’Donnell will join the cathedral’s two existing ecumenical canons, a Methodist minister and a Presbyterian minister.

The statutes of the Church of Ireland permit ecumenical canons and there are already Catholic ecumenical canons at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, and at Down Cathedral, Downpatrick. Belfast’s troubled history of sectarian violence makes this latest appointment particularly significant.

Fr O’Donnell described his appointment as “a significant step, perhaps even historic” and recognised the “generosity” of the invitation. He said: “The honour is shared with all those who work quietly and persistently to improve and strengthen inter-church relationships.”
Among those people are David Stevens, Thérèse Woodfield and Catherine Harper, members of the cathedral music team. As part of their ‘Choir Schools Project’ they deliver weekly classroom music lessons, free of charge, to three primary schools in deprived North Belfast: one school in a Protestant area, one Catholic school, and one of the city’s few integrated schools. Particularly promising pupils are invited to sing in the cathedral’s choirs.

Rise in Catholic numbers
The number of British adults who identify as Christian has risen for the second year while the number who say they have no religion has declined.

Figures from NatCen’s British Social Attitudes survey, which consisted of interviews with 4,328 adults, showed that the number of Catholics rose from 8 per cent to 9 per cent last year, the level it was last at in 2002.

This caused the figure for Christians to rise from 43 per cent of the population to 44 per cent. This coincides with a slight fall in the number of those who identify themselves as having no religion, from 49 to 48 per cent last year. This is the second year it has fallen. The decline of the so-called “nones” is most pronounced among the under-45s. The percentage of adult members of religions other than Christianity has remained at 8 per cent.

Ian Simpson, senior researcher at NatCen, said: “It appears that the steady decline of religion in Britain has come to a halt, at least for now.”


St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has sent 22 students, alumni and athletes to the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The university, home to the Endurance Performance and Coaching Centre (EPACC), has hosted or trained athletes including 1500m runner Charlie Grice, 5000m runner Stephanie Twell, rower Moe Sbihi, light-heavyweight boxer Joshua Buatsi, and T33 wheelchair racer and four-time European record holder Toby Gold.

St Mary’s most famous alumnus, double Olympic gold medallist, Mo Farah, who trained for nearly a decade at the EPACC, is also due to compete.

The vice-chancellor of St Mary’s, Francis Campbell, said: “We are proud to be a home to so many exceptionally talented people.” (See page 4.)


The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has said that he wants trainee priests in his diocese to be withdrawn from seminaries and instead to live in communities with links to parishes.

His comments about the long-term future for seminaries last weekend came after The Tablet revealed that he had decided not to send his seminarians to Maynooth, which he later indicated was because of concerns around allegations that it had a gay subculture. (See Sarah Mac Donald, page 6.)


Anthony Horan, the new director of the Scottish Catholic Parliamentary Office, has called for faith to play a role in public life. He said that recent social attitudes surveys that indicated that the majority of the Scottish population did not identify with a faith had been used as “a reason to remove God, once and for all, from public life”.

His comments in an article for The Scotsman echoed an article written last year by Bishop Stephen Robson of Dunkeld, who argued that religious belief in Scotland was significantly under-recorded and sometimes disguised for social reasons.

Quoting Pope Francis on the importance of religious freedom, Mr Horan said that “the legacy of Christianity is to uphold the respective competencies of the spiritual and the temporal” and committed himself to promoting “our faith and Catholic Social Teaching in a way that positively engages the secular society in which we live”.

Scottish monastery reopens
St Mary’s Monastery in Perth, home to the Redemptorist community, is set to reopen following a year of refurbishments.

The monastery and retreat centre has been restored and upgraded, including the addition of en-suite bathrooms in 34 of the rooms, Wi-Fi and an overhaul of the building’s electrics and heating system.

The Redemptorist community describes the upgrades as bringing the building up to the standard necessary to enable its work with the local community and further afield.

St Mary’s, which has served as a retreat centre for clergy since 1870, will now also be available as a conference centre.

Cruise-ship tourists have been accused of disrupting funerals at Britain’s northernmost cathedral. St Magnus’ Church of Scotland Cathedral (above) in Kirkwall is one of the most popular attractions in the Orkney islands. But recently tourists disembarking from large cruise liners have distressed locals by disregarding signs that say “closed to visitors” and entering the church during funerals.

The Revd Fraser Macnaughton, minister at the cathedral, speculated that this “bizarre” behaviour may be explained by cultural differences and changes. Some cultures, he said, are used to open-casket funerals, while elsewhere in the UK funerals are becoming less visible.

“We don’t have a crematorium in Orkney so 95 per cent of funerals are in churches and almost everyone is buried rather than cremated. On the mainland, it’s much more common to have services in crematoria – which are usually in the middle of nowhere or screened off by trees. Maybe church funerals have become a novelty,” he said.