News Briefing: From Britain and Ireland

Pharmacy guidelines welcomed The Catholic Bishops’ Conference has welcomed new guidance from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) on religion, personal values and beliefs. It follows a decision by the GPhC to pull back from a proposal to scrap a conscience clause for pharmacists, following the outcome of a public consultation launched last March.

The GPhC, which regulates pharmacists in England, Scotland and Wales, had suggested that “person-centred care” should not be “compromised because of personal values and beliefs”. This essentially removed the opt-out clause from the 2010 code of conduct, which allowed pharmacists to refer patients to other professionals, if their beliefs meant they were opposed to supplying drugs such as the morning after pill. The Catholic bishops said they had met with the GPhC during the consultation process to emphasise the importance of an individual’s right to conscientious objection while maintaining person-centred care.

In new guidance issued this month, the GPhC said it recognises the “central” and “positive contribution” religion can play in providing care to a “diverse population”. However, it added, pharmacy professionals must act in accordance with equality and human rights law and make sure that an individual’s care is not compromised.


The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, has said that his congregation and the archdiocese share a sense of “bewilderment” at the sudden death of a priest who went missing from his church in Edinburgh last week. Fr Martin Xavier Vazhachira (above), 33, who was originally from Kerala in southern India, was last seen on 20 June. Police said his body was found on the beach at Dunbar in East Lothian last Friday. Fr Xavier arrived in Scotland in 2016 to follow postgraduate studies and also served in a number of local Catholic parishes. The cause of death has yet to be established.


Call for new Calais centre
Humanitarian groups in Calais have begun pressing for a new reception centre because around 500 newcomers hoping to cross to Britain have now returned to the town’s streets. French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb ruled out a new centre last week and pledged extra riot police to manage the influx.

Bishop Jean-Paul Jaeger of Arras, in the French rust belt across the Channel from Dover, has said victories by the anti-immigrant National Front there in recent parliamentary elections should not undercut efforts to solve the migration problem burdening towns like Calais. In a letter to parishioners, Bishop Jaeger said Calais symbolised “a global incapacity to grasp the migration phenomenon and provide adequate solutions”.


Ireland’s youngest priest, 25-year-old Fr David Vard (pictured above with his mother, Elizabeth, and former parish priest Fr Joe McDermott), was ordained in his home town of Newbridge last Sunday by Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin. Speaking at a parish event last week, the bishop said that 27 of the diocese’s 90 priests are over 75, with 12 over 80. “Even if we were guaranteed an ordination every year for the foreseeable future, we would still be playing catch-up,” he added, according to a report in the Irish Times. Bishop Nulty said that while none of the 117 churches in the diocese would be closed, there may have to be a reappraisal of Mass times, while the involvement of lay people in parish life “offers more hope”.


The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for a cross-party Brexit commission to “draw much of the poison from the debate” and work to unite Britain across “regions, social groups, faiths and generations”. Archbishop Justin Welby told The Mail on Sunday that the UK needed a commonly agreed negotiating strategy for exiting the EU. He said the commission should be under the authority of Parliament, but without the power to bind it, and chaired by a senior politician.

The archbishop wrote that the Grenfell Tower tragedy and a series of terror attacks had highlighted divisions in the country. “A country united after Brexit is essential [if we are to be] resilient under the threats we face,” he said, warning of the “under­standable temptation” to exploit differences for political advantage.