The Emeritus Bishop of Lancaster, who in 2008 had become the first Augustinian to be appointed bishop to an English diocese for over five centuries, was presiding at a solemn thanksgiving Mass for the election of Pope Leo XIV at St Augustine’s Church in Hammersmith, west London

In his homily, Robert Marsh OSA shared some of the history of the order, which owes its foundation to the initiatives of two ­thirteenth-century popes, Innocent IV and Alexander IV, who in two scoops gathered up disparate groups of hermits drawing inspiration from the Rule of St Augustine and united them under their first prior general. In May, for the first time in over 750 years, the cardinals in conclave turned to one of that prior general’s successors, Cardinal Robert Prevost, to lead the Church. “One good turn deserves another,” Fr Marsh explained.

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