The Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Richard Moth, (above), has skydived 15,000 feet to raise money for the Lourdes Pilgrimage Fund, which helps pay for the sick and needy to visit the shrine and grotto in southern France.
Lib Dem backs Catholic schools
A Liberal Democrat member of the Scottish Parliament has said that the party will never again attempt to challenge the future of Catholic schooling. Alex Cole-Hamilton, who represents Glasgow West, helped to defer a Scottish party conference motion calling for a single secular school system across the country. Mr Cole-Hamilton told The Tablet: “As a Liberal, I’m a pluralist and as such I recognise there are many ways people would want to live that may differ from the monochromatic, one-size-fits-all approach from the state.”
The lead Bishop on Migration and Asylum, Paul McAleenan, has welcomed a campaign to end the practice of indefinite detention in the United Kingdom. For its #28for28 campaign, Refugee Tales, the outreach arm of the charity, Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, will release 28 stories of detainees online over 28 days, with the final tale being read in Parliament. Actors and writers including Jeremy Irons, Zoe Wanamaker and Maxine Peake (pictured) have been filmed reading the stories. “These tales remind us that those held in detention are human beings whose God-given human dignity must be respected,” said Bishop McAleenan.
Bishop Philip Egan has set up a new Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) personal parish within the Diocese of Portsmouth to meet the needs of those attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. The parish, established on 8 September, is the first FSSP parish in the UK and will be located at St William of York Church, Reading, until a permanent home is found. The FSSP’s Superior General,
Fr Andrzej Komorowski, said: “The establishment of this parish represents an important step, firstly for our priests and parishioners in Reading, but also for the FSSP’s apostolic endeavours elsewhere.”
The Bishops of England and Wales are due to arrive in Rome tomorrow at the start of their week-long Ad Limina visit. During the five-yearly visit the bishops are scheduled to meet the Pope and report on the state of their dioceses. No further details have been released.
Magdalene laundry sale halted
The proposed sale of the last remaining Magdalene laundry in state ownership to Japanese developers was halted last week by Dublin City councillors. They voted to block the sale of the derelict laundry on Sean McDermott Street to the Toyoko Inn hotel chain. The hotelier had offered €14.5 million (£13 million) for the two-acre site and planned to develop a 350-bed low budget hotel, as well as student accommodation and shops. The plan for the former institution run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity also included 60 units of social housing and a permanent memorial to the women who worked in the laundry until its closure in 1996. Social Democrat city councillor Gary Gannon, who proposed the motion to block the sale, later tweeted that he was “looking forward to ensuring an appropriate memorial is placed there to honour the victims and survivors of institutional abuse”.
Kathleen Griffin, one of three founding members of Catholic Voices, has died from cancer. Ms Griffin, a BBC broadcaster, writer and academic, was a longstanding parishioner of Holy Apostles, Pimlico, in London. Along with her work on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, she won a Sony award for the series A Feast for the Eyes.
A leading American evangelist has told a Scottish gathering that “we have forgotten Jesus”. Bishop Robert Barron, who is known for his commentaries on Catholic faith and culture posted on YouTube, addressed a full to capacity audience at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.
Christopher Herdon, who after early retirement from the Foreign Office ran the paper’s Church in the World section between 1988 and 2004, died on 11 September aged 90. There will be an obituary in The Tablet next week.
Compiled by Rose Gamble
Loading ...
