News Briefings Britain and Ireland

Cross-bench peer Baroness O’Loan was joined by around 60 people in the House of Lords in the presence of the Speaker, Lord McFall, at an event she hosted to celebrate the centenary of the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries. Lord McFall congratulated the Medical Mission Sisters, as they are usually known, on their achievements over the years and noted their contribution to healthcare delivery across the world.  A message of congratulations from Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols was read on his behalf by Fr Christopher Colven, Catholic chaplain to the Houses of Parliament. 

Canon William Agley has been appointed general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales for five years, succeeding Greg Pope, the first layman to do the job, who returns to his previous role as executive director of the general secretariat. A qualified solicitor and priest of Hexham and Newcastle, between 2012 and 2017, Canon Agley served as an official the Dicastery for the Clergy in Rome. He said, “I will miss the clergy and people of Hexham and Newcastle very much, especially my parish, where it has been a joy to minister, but am also grateful for the opportunity to serve the Church in this new way.”

The Charles Plater Trust is making £5k grants available in its small grants programme to respond to the “signs of the times” and help build social justice in the UK. Bishop Richard Moth, chair of the trust, said, “We face profound social justice challenges as a society today. Marking the papacy of Pope Leo XIV and, also, with a relatively new government in place in this country, it is timely to offer a new funding opportunity to charity partners to pioneer new ways in which Catholic social teaching in action can contribute to a new vision for our society, where all belong and can flourish.” 

A new survey says Catholics in Northern Ireland are more likely than Protestant to regard climate change as driven by humans. Sixty-two per cent of Catholics questioned in The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey believe climate change to be caused by human action, as compared to 56 per cent of members of the Church of Ireland and 38 per cent of Presbyterians. Seventy-five per cent of Catholics said scientists could be trust on climate change, and 47 per cent of Presbyterians agreed in the poll of 1,199 adults conducted by Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University. 

Leaders of the Catholic Church and Episcopal Church of Scotland have signed a “declaration” of friendship. Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh said by “deepening” friendship, “we strengthen our common witness to the Gospel in a world that longs for hope and reconciliation”. The co-signatory of the St Ninian Declaration, Bishop Mark Strange, Primus of the Scottish Episcopalians, said: “Through this act we in the Scottish Episcopal and Roman Catholic Churches are committing to walk forward together as friends, on the same journey of faith that Ninian started over a thousand years ago.”

The Bishop of Shrewsbury exhorted Catholics to “love” others like the “Mother Teresa of Manchester.”  Bishop Mark Davies said the life of Venerable Elizabeth Prout (1820-1864) called Catholics to witness “in those darkest places where hope and human dignity are now threatened”. The foundress of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, Prout served the poor of the industrial slums of Manchester. Preaching at a Mass in her burial place, the Church of St Anne and Blessed Dominic in Sutton, St Helens, Lancashire, Bishop Davies said: “Elizabeth Prout did not join Marx and Engels in their social analysis…demanding revolutionary violence…Elizabeth was able to dig deeper into the resources of faith, prayer and lived virtue, to offer hope to the people among whom she was ready to live and die as a sister.” Known as Mother Mary Joseph of Jesus, Prout as declared Venerable by Pope Francis in 2021. 

A new Catholic parish intended to serve more than 2,000 people in Brighton and Hove was inaugurated on Sunday, 14 September. Those served by the parish represent 11 separate communities who formerly belonged to eight parishes and the University of Sussex Catholic Chaplaincy. At an inaugural Mass in St John the Baptist Church, Kemptown, Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton described the inauguration of the new parish as “significant “as local people and clergy opened “the door to new possibilities for the great work that the Lord has given to us”. He added: “We are witnessing many fresh shoots of faith across our church communities, which are seeing new growth as people find their way to Christ through His Church”. In 2024, Bishop Moth published a new pastoral plan for the diocese. 

The lay missionary association Viatores Christi celebrated its sixty-fifth anniversary in Dublin on Saturday, 20 September. Founded in 1960, Viatores Christi has trained thousands and volunteers and development workers who serve long-term projects including in Africa, South-east Asia and Haiti. Pauline Conway, the president of Viatores Christi said the association had been “in many ways… ahead of its time.” She added: “Long before the full impact of Vatican II was felt, this association recognised the indispensable role of lay people in the Church’s mission to the world”. Special prayers of thanksgiving were offered following the release in late August of the Irish missionary Gena Heraty, a long-standing member of Viatores Christi who was kidnapped weeks earlier in Haiti.

Lord Lemos, the social policy expert and author, delivered the Catholic Union’s 2025 Craigmyle Lecture at Notre Dame London, speaking on “Catholicism for the next generation”. Chaired by Baronss Hollins, president of the Catholic Union, and sponsored by Stone King, there was standing room only for the lecture in which Lord Lemos said,“Catholic belief is alive and well among children and young people.  Religion and faith are about practice as well as belief and, of course, conscience is more important than ever. In an increasingly complicated world, the Catholic Church should confidently share its wisdom and tell of the contribution God’s grace and divine providence makes to the troubling problems of anxiety and mental health among young people.”

The Jesuit Refugee Service has called on the UK and French governments to uphold the right to seek asylum as the first flights have taken off under the “one-in-one-out” agreement between the UK and French governments. “We do not know what awaits those removed from the UK and neither do they,” said JRS. “We remain deeply concerned by the lack of transparency and accountability surrounding its implementation. Behind every border policy are human lives, each with dignity and rights that must be upheld. Too many people are being made vulnerable by conflict, instability, poor governance and corruption, climate displacement, and poverty. Countering those who prey on these injustices, whether people smugglers or human traffickers, is crucial. Blaming the people who have become the currency of criminals is both morally and politically abhorrent.”

To mark the 850th anniversary of Glasgow as a Bishop’s Burgh, the Blacader Prayer book, written and illuminated in France in the later 1400s for Robert Blackadder, Archbishop of Glasgow, will be on display in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow, for one day only, on 29 September. There will also be talks about the prayerbook and its background. The book, which is lodged in the National Library of Scotland, contains illustrations of St Margaret and St Ninian, both of them central to worship and the spread of the Gospel in Scotland. 

In an open letter, Women’s Ordination Worldwide has appealed to Pope Leo XIV to “recognise the vocations and talents of women that are still squandered by the Church”. The lobby group said they represent millions of Catholics who during Synodal discussions, “spoke boldly in favour of ordaining women to finally recognise them for the ministries they perform”. They urged Pope Leo to make “the ‘leap’ to correct the sins of misogyny and patriarchy that afflict the Church” and suggested he should meet them before the end of the Jubilee Year. 

The Irish Army bomb squad blocked part of central Dublin last week after the director of a Catholic think-tank received a letter purporting to contain anthrax. David Quinn of the Iona Institute posted a photograph of a letter he had received through the post, containing a white powdery substance on X. “I can only imagine that it’s somebody with a hang-up about the Catholic Church,” he told the Irish Independent. 

Bishop of Elfin Kevin Doran has hit out at Ireland’s lobsided economic development which is focused on the east of the country. At a Mass to celebrate the centenary of the Chapel of Divine Providence at Hope House, Foxford, Co Mayo, Bishop Doran lamented that many communities in the West of Ireland have been reduced to “the fringe of viability”. “While banks and Garda stations and many long-established businesses disappear from our towns and villages, the cities and especially the whole East coast creaks under the strain of overdevelopment.” He paid tribute to the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy. 

“Priests are not meant to be supernatural beings, but ordinary men who give their lives to God and to walking with the faithful,” Archbishop Dermot Farrell has said. He was speaking at the ordination of Fr Ciarán Egan to the priesthood in St Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, the home of the Oratorian Community in the Archdiocese of Dublin.  This Oratorian community began its path to formation in 2020 and this is the first priestly ordination to take place in St Kevin’s. In his homily, Archbishop Farrell drew from the writings of both St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman, the “most famous Oratorian of more recent times”.

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