Bishop Stephen Wright of Hexham and Newcastle was among the 175 signatories of an open letter from Church Action on Poverty calling on the government to lift the cap limiting child benefit to a couple’s first two children.
“This should be a country that creates opportunities, which believes in and pursues progress, and which does all it can to enable children to flourish and pursue their dreams,” the letter said. “Towards that end, the UK’s shared social security system should be just and effective. Yet, right now, the two-child limit is instead creating a great injustice.”
The appeal came ahead of the government’s first Budget on 30 October. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales provided an e-action form on its website for people to contact their MPs to voice opposition to the cap.
The Catholic pro-life leader Isabel Vaughan-Spruce joined objections to a Bournemouth court’s conviction of a man for breaching an abortion clinic “buffer zone” by praying silently within its limits.
“I am immensely concerned that a judge has branded Adam Smith-Connor a criminal for silently praying in a public space for his son who was aborted,” she told The Tablet, after Smith-Connor received a conditional discharge and was ordered to pay £9,000 in costs for actions in November 2022.
Vaughan-Spruce, a co-director of March for Life UK, continued: “If silent prayer becomes a crime then we’ve moved into the realm of ‘thought policing’ as well as discriminating against those with religious beliefs.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints began a partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) to provide hot meals, clothing and toiletries for refugees at risk of homelessness.
Jemima Tanner of JRS UK said the services it provides for refugee’s health, dietary and cultural needs were “only possible because of generous supporters and is becoming harder as food prices remain high, so we are extremely grateful to be beginning this new collaboration with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”.
The Catholic Society at Nottingham University expressed “shock” after learning the university had placed a “trigger warning” on The Canterbury Tales, because the fourteenth-century text contains “expressions of Christian faith” as well as instances of violence and mental illness.
Elizabeth Pey, president of the society, said in a social media post that this sent “a deeply concerning message to all students that Christian beliefs – which are central not only to many university students, but also to the intellectual and cultural foundations of English history – are somehow offensive or harmful to others.”
Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London delivered the 2024 Romero Lecture on 18 October, comparing the conduct of Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Ukrainian Catholic patriarch, and of St Óscar Romero. Both, he said, “understood/understand, that their effectiveness as church leaders would depend on their ability to stand close to their suffering people and share their distress”.
Pope Francis, King Charles and Sir Keir Starmer sent messages to the Coptic Orthodox Church in the UK as it celebrated Eid El Nayrouz (Coptic New Year) on 15 October. At Vespers in St Margaret’s Church in Westminster, Archbishop Angaelos, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London, spoke of the need for a “gospel of hope, to heal the broken heartedness of war and conflict”.
The Polish Catholic Mission in England and Wales marked its 130th anniversary last week with a pilgrimage to Walsingham and a Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa and St Casimir in North London, attended by Professor Piotr Wilczek, Poland’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Bishop Marek Marczak, the secretary general of the Polish bishops’ conference, also attended the celebrations.
The Archdiocese of Southwark has produced a toolkit to promote racial inclusion in Catholic parishes. Devised in partnership with St Margaret of Scotland parish in Carshalton Beeches, the free online kit includes advice on ensuring diversity in parish ministries, and the use of racially diverse images in church, including statues of the saints and Our Lady.
Sean Fleming, Ireland’s junior minister for foreign affairs, said he was “horrified” by the reported contents of a Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) course for teachers offered by Dublin City University. More than 15,000 people have signed a petition demanding the “immediate cessation” of the SPHE curriculum, pending a review. The Department of Education said secondary school pupils would “categorically” not be asked to watch pornography in sex education classes.
Bishop Nicholas Hudson, an auxiliary in the Diocese of Westminster, will celebrate the Red Wednesday Mass for the charity Aid to the Church in Need at the Brompton Oratory on 20 November. Many churches and public buildings will display red lights on the day which highlights the plight of persecuted Christians and other religious minorities around the world.
The first visit of the relics of St Bernadette of Lourdes to Ireland drew 1,000 people to a rosary procession at St Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry. Hundreds more queued to enter St Mary’s Church, Belfast, to venerate the relics of the visionary of Lourdes. The pilgrimage will end on 5 November.
The parish of St Dunstan’s in King’s Heath, Birmingham hosted the relics of St Jacinta and St Francisco, the seers of Fatima, for veneration last weekend, alongside the national pilgrim statue of the Virgin of Fatima.
A life-size replica of the Turin Shroud went on display at the Bournemouth Oratory. The exhibition in the undercroft of the Sacred Heart Church runs until 10 November.
Kayburley Hounsou, a 14-year-old pupil at St Peter’s Catholic High School in Gloucester, won the Catholic Young Writer Award. The competition organised by the Catholic Union invited participants to imagine a friend had asked a question about one of the Sacraments. Their explanation had to include references to the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Kevin McDermott, headmaster of St Peter’s, told The Tablet Kayburley had “expressed so well that Catholic values have a place in modernity and this is what we at St Peter’s share with our students”.
Leeds Trinity University installed the businessman and philanthropist John Studzinski CBE as its chancellor. “In all my activities, my goal is to nurture and sustain human dignity, and I see my new role with the university as compatible with that,” he said, praising its “values-based approach”.
Worth School in West Sussex was named “Boarding School of the Year” by the Independent Schools of the Year Awards. “The judges were impressed particularly by the way our values are reflected in the boarding life of the school,” said Stuart McPherson, the headmaster of the school, which is located in the grounds of Worth Abbey near Crawley.
Sr Alessandra Smerilli, Secretary to the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, urged people to chose “to build an economy of peace instead of a war economy” in an address to a webinar, “War and the Wounded Earth: The Impact of Conflict on Creation”, on 18 October.
The event was organised by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and St Mary’s University, Twickenham, with other speakers including Tim Hill, chief executive of Stella Maris, Philip Booth, Director of Policy and Research for the bishops’ conference, and Anna Blackman, who lectures in Catholic Religious Education at the University of Glasgow.
Boars Hill Priory near Oxford will launch an online course on 10 November to help people develop their baptismal calling to be prophets. Fr Alexander Ezechukwu OCD, prior of the Carmelite community at Boars Hill, said The School of Prophets course would encourage “a prayerful engagement with current social reality fostering critical thinking from a spiritual perspective”. Each of the 15 sessions will last 90 minutes.
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