A former Anglican bishop will be received into the Catholic Church as a priest in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham at the start of July.
The Rt Revd Richard Pain, who retired as Bishop of Monmouth in 2019, is the first bishop from the Church in Wales to join the Ordinariate, following the reception of several former Church of England bishops in the past two years.
He said that “the call to Catholicism seems natural and spiritual” after a period of discernment since his retirement.
“The Benedictine understanding of obedience – hearing the Lord – has been significant to my personal formation,” he said.
“The call to conversion which follows has led me to becoming a convert to the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate.”
The ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, will receive Richard Pain into the Ordinariate at the Church of St Basil and St Gwladys, the host church for the Ordinariate in the parish of All Saints in Newport.
Mgr Newton praised the former bishop’s “long and distinguished ministry in the Church in Wales”.
“He has many gifts which he will continue to use to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Wales,” he said.
Richard Pain was ordained an Anglican priest in 1986, serving all of his ministry in the Diocese of Monmouth where he was elected bishop in 2013. He was the lead bishop for ministry in the Church in Wales and the chair of its training arm – St Padarn’s Institute – on its foundation in 2016.
He has been married to Juliet for more than 40 years and they have two sons.
Prior to his retirement on grounds of ill health in April 2019, Bishop Pain had been absent from office since the previous July, prompting speculation about a conflict within the diocesan leadership.
The Church in Wales announced in December 2018 that the bishop had entered mediation with his senior team, but apologised six months later for this “misleading and inappropriate statement”.
Two subsequent Church investigations – one into disclosures under bullying and harassment policies, the other into the bishop’s personal conduct – found no cause for further action, but a subsequent review by the former Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, found significant failings in both investigations.
The Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John, apologised and expressed regret “that what could have been an opportunity to attend well to a challenging situation became ruinous and distressing and left numerous people vulnerable and damaged”.
Bishop James’s Monmouth review said that “long ministries of service to the Church were curtailed, careers damaged, and reputations left ruinous” by events surrounding Bishop Pain’s retirement and called the process “a tragedy”.
“Decisions made at the time, each of which seemed justified to those involved, created a web of suspicion and mistrust,” it said.
The Monmouth Review Implementation Group reported to the governing body of the Church in Wales at its most recent meeting in April this year.
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