Priest’s charity climb
A Glasgow priest has overcome ill health to raise money for a Catholic charity by climbing Britain’s highest mountain. Fr Owen Ness (pictured), 67, parish priest of St John Bosco’s in Easterhouse, defied a serious back problem to scale Ben Nevis and raise £650 to pay for a water supply for an African community. The funds were for SCIAF’s Real Gifts Water Lifeline. A year ago, Fr Ness was unable to walk because of the spinal condition stenosis.
The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh has announced plans to reorganise in order to enable more effective evangelisation of local communities. The pastoral life of the archdiocese, including sacramental preparation, catechetics, adult formation and marriage preparation, is currently operated via a centralised Pastoral Resources Department. Under the changes, unveiled on Monday by Archbishop Leo Cushley, responsibility for these tasks will be transferred to priests and parishes, with a new consultative Archdiocesan Pastoral Council established. The Archdiocese also said it will close its 20-room bed-and-breakfast centre in the capital’s Bruntsfield area. The Gillis Centre, also a conference venue, last year posted a loss of £48,000. It employs 12 staff.
An advertising watchdog has dismissed complaints about an anti-abortion billboard campaign run in Northern Ireland in January 2017, saying it is not misleading. Run by pro-life organisation Both Lives Matter, the advert read: “100,000 people are alive today because of our laws on abortion. Why change that?”. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) said 14 complaints alleged the figure could not be proved. The ASA concluded that the figures were largely accurate. “The evidence indicated a reasonable probability that around 100,000 people were alive in Northern Ireland today who would have been aborted had it been legal to do so,” the ASA said.
Top-deck Mass
In what he described as a “fantastic initiative”, the Bishop of Paisley celebrated Mass on a double-decker bus at Paisley Cross last Saturday afternoon. It is believed to be the first time that Mass has been celebrated on a double-decker in the UK. Bishop John Keenan, who celebrated Mass with the assistance of Fr Joe Burke, said he hoped the project would offer people “a route back to a relationship with God”.
JoAnn DellaNeva (above), professor of Romance languages and literature at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, has been appointed academic director of the university’s London Global Gateway. The two-year term will give Professor DellaNeva responsibility for overseeing the London undergraduate programme as well as promoting the university’s research profile in the UK.
Archbishop’s boycott threat
The Anglican Archbishop of Uganda has announced he will boycott the Lambeth Conference in 2018 citing the gradual acceptance of same-sex marriage by the Church of England. In an interview with the BBC, Archbishop Stanley Ntagali said he will not attend the next meeting of Anglican leaders, saying he was not prepared to engage with people who took “an unbiblical view of marriage”. The next meeting of the church’s global leadership is due in October, and Archbishop Ntagali says his decision to boycott it is supported fully by Uganda’s senior Anglicans.
He made the comments after joining the leader of the Anglican Communion, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, to visit refugee camps in the country’s north, which have given a compassionate welcome to nearly one million refugees from South Sudan. Archbishop Welby also visited Khartoum where he declared Sudan the thirty-ninth province of the Anglican Communion.
Ex Labour MP dies at 82
Former Labour MP for Hull North Kevin McNamara has died aged 82 after a short illness. The practising Catholic kept his seat over 10 successive elections, from 1966 to 2005, when he stepped down. He leaves a wife and four children. (An obituary will be published in The Tablet next week.)
Compiled by James Roberts
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