Alan Clark's Reception into the Catholic Church

IT WAS NOT only the death of Alan Clark last Sunday at the age of 71 that was kept secret for more than two days, but also his reception into the Catholic Church two months ago. The late MP for Kensington and Chelsea was keen not to add to the pressure on his family during his serious last illness by fuelling media speculation.

For five or six years Alan Clark had been fascinated by Catholicism, and since 1994 had been talking regularly to Cardinal Hume's ecumenical adviser, the Franciscan Michael Seed. Two or three years ago he had seemed ready to make his move, but held back. In the end his reception had similarities with that of his father, the art historian Kenneth Clark, though he had expressed aversion to a deathbed conversion of that sort.

It was in June that Alan Clark had surgery for removal of a brain tumour from which he had nearly died the month before. At first he seemed better, and he went to Scotland to reflect in peace and privacy. The experience affected him. Then on 10 July Fr Norman Brown of Westminster Cathedral, chaplain to the cathedral's Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, assisted by Fr Michael Seed, brought 50 pilgrims to Clark's house, Saltwood Castle in Kent, on a guild outing planned six months previously. Mass was said in the eleventh-century chapel, which had not happened before, and Clark was moved once more by the all-embracing "ordinariness" of the Catholic Church that always impressed him. For the pilgrims came from many different countries, and exhibited a range of attitudes from simple devotion to intellectual enquiry.

When the others left for lunch in Hythe before returning for Benediction, Alan Clark met Michael Seed privately and was received into the Catholic Church. Fr Seed had had a premonition, but there had been no work beforehand; there was no time to inform the local bishop or parish priest. "It was Providence at work", says Michael Seed.