Sunday, September 22, 2013

Support for Anglican Ordinariate in England and Wales

England’s leading Catholic prelate has written to every parish in England and Wales, asking for support of the Anglican ordinariate.

The letter from Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, which is to be read in all parishes this Sunday, is accompanied by a message from Msgr. Keith Newton, who heads the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walshingham. Archbishop Nichols encourages the faithful to read the message from Msgr. Newton and support the ordinariate and its members “for the particular gifts they bring which add to our rich diversity.”

In his own message Msgr. Newton says that the ordinariate represents “a small step toward healing one of the most damaging wounds in our history: the dividing of Christ’s Body, the Church in this land.”


Established by Pope Benedict XVI in January 2011, the Anglican ordinariate has faced some resistance among English Catholic clerics. Earlier this year, Archbishop Nichols resolved one longstanding problem by assigning the London church of Our Lady of the Assumption to the ordinariate—which had not previously had its own church in England.

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