News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

Heythrop flats plan
The former site of Heythrop College (above) in London could be transformed into a luxury retirement village if the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea approves plans for a proposed £600-million development this week.

Flats in the development on Kensington Square in London will cost up to £3,000 a week to rent, and will include access to on-site nursing, a spa, a yoga studio, cinema and wine room, as well as gardens designed by Chelsea Flower Show winner Andy Sturgeon. The Jesuits sold the property to developer Johnny Sandelson in 2017 for a figure reportedly in excess of £100 million. The college closed at the end of the 2017-18 academic year.

Hundreds of thousands of theology books formerly housed at the college library, including books dating back to the college’s foundation in what is now Belgium in 1614, are now available to readers at Senate House Library at the University of London.

Ged Clapson, Catholic journalist and former communications officer for the British Jesuits, has died age 63. Mr Clapson, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year, began his career at the BBC before moving to London to work with Cafod in the 1990s. He worked for the Catholic Communications Centre in London, and provided media training to seminarians in England and Wales before working full time for the Jesuits.

A Scottish branch of the international peace movement Pax Christi was launched in Coatbridge last weekend. Pax Christi Scotland was established early in 2018 and has been functioning under the aegis of Justice and Peace Scotland since then. The event at the Conforti Centre in Coatbridge saw it emerge as an autonomous arm of the Pax Christi movement.

George Weigel, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC and author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, is to speak at St Dominic’s Priory, Belsize Park, London, on Wednesday on “Democracy and its Discontents: Catholicism and Public Life in Turbulent Times”.

Row over accused priests’ rites
The Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland has raised concerns over the Church authorities’ handling of funerals for priests accused of abuse at its annual meeting this month.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) has published guidelines on the conduct of funerals of clerics against whom allegations have been made.

However, according to the ACP, some dioceses and religious orders are operating their own guidelines. The ACP said that one diocese’s guidelines included a directive that funerals take place in a private chapel, that no death notice be published, that the deceased priest be referred to by his Christian name throughout the funeral rites, and not be buried in his vestments. The funeral Mass is not to be concelebrated and no vestments are to be worn by priests attending the funeral.

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing its “gravest crisis in centuries”, the Bishop of Ossory warned a conference for laity and priests in his diocese at St Kieran’s College Kilkenny last weekend. Bishop Dermot Farrell told delegates that he wanted to create a culture where laity are encouraged and empowered for ministry.

“We have fallen off a cliff edge in regard to vocations to the priesthood,” said Bishop Farrell. “We cannot remedy this by clericalising good lay people. Crisis demands creativity. This time of reduced numbers may well afford us an opportunity to be creative and to reimagine the institutional church.
 
Environment secretary
Michael Gove (above) paid tribute to Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, in a lecture in London this week.

“The encyclical is remarkable for the depth of thought which goes into addressing the twin challenges of climate and social justice,” said Mr Gove, who gave the annual address for the religious think tank Theos. He added that the encyclical contained “critical lessons” and warned: “Never have we treated our common home as badly as we have in the last 200 years”. (See James Roberts, pages 10-11.)