My Life Story

I was born in St Leonard's-on-Sea on 31st March 1946. My father James was then an officer in the RAF serving in Hong Kong which had just been reoccupied. James' family who came from Dorset originally and may have been Nonconformists. My mother Roberta came from Northumberland and Co. Durham originally, and were strong Methodists. An ancestor of hers was the famous locomotive engineer, Timothy Hackworth. James converted to Catholicism during the Second World War and Roberta joined him after he returned to England.

The family moved to London and my two sisters and I attended the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus in Cavendish Square behind John Lewis in Oxford Street. I then attended St Philip's Preparatory School near Gloucester Road. This establishment had been started by an eccentric demagogue Mr Richard Tibbets, a strict martinet, drunkard and bully. An apologia for this man was composed by Ysenda Maxwell-Graham. She presented him as someone full of jolly japes, and charming eccentricities.

The church was important for me from an early age and I had positive memories of St Mary's Cadogan Street. In 1959 I failed the entrance exam to Downside the Benedictine School in Somerset. At the time it seemed like a disaster, but later I saw it as a blessing. Instead I went to The Oratory School (the OS) near Reading which had been founded by St John Henry Newman. The head of the OS was an idiosyncratic medievalist Benedictine, Dom Adrian Morey.

I was fortunate in having three supportive aunts. Margaret the eldest, had been interned on Singapore during the war. The second, Barbara, appears the works, of the Anglo-Irish writer, Bruce Arnold. At about this time I begun to visit Paris where I stayed with my third aunt Ursula and her husband Bernard in the 16th Arondissment. The latter took me around Paris as well as visiting other great cultural centres including Chartres. Bernard gave me a taste for French religion and philosophy, especially the works of Simone Weil and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He also introduced me to the work of St John of the Cross, as well as that of Martin Heidegger whom I never understood.

I left the OS in 1964 having acquired 2 'A' levels. I excelled in History but most other subjects didn't agree with me. I spent a year studying for further A levels but didn't achieve adequate grades for the universities of my choice, York and Exeter. After this I took a part-time job and then hitch-hiked round Europe and this included a memorable bus journey from Dubrovnik to Skopje through Montenegro and Kosovo. I visited Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. I revisited the Checkpoint many years later when Berlin had become a sophisticated modern city.

On my return home I took a temporary job in a tax office and from there I joined the Board of Trade as an executive officer. I also began a BA degree at Birkbeck College a college of London of University which awarded internal degree although Birkbeck was for working men and women. I was influenced by the Head of History, Professor Douglas Dakin a scholar of modern Greek history and Diplomatic history. I gained a 2:1 degree in 1971, and later returned to take up an MA course under Dakin, I undertook a dissertation on the Stresa Conference of 1934. This was an ill-fated attempt to solve German re-armament. I also became involved in the Catholic Society and fell under the spell of the chaplain, Fr Michael Tyrrell SJ. This was a major step along my spiritual journey.

After finishing my MA on Diplomatic History, I began seriously to think about my future since I quickly realised that my university qualifications had no value in the market place. I had by then become involved in the Servite Parish in Fulham Road as a reader, parish councillor and a First Communion catechist. This inspired me to resign from the Civil Service and I applied for a PGCE course at St Mary's, Strawberry Hill. I realised soon that I wasn't cut out for the blackboard jungle, and with the help of Fr Robert Plourde and Mgr John Coghlan I applied to train for the priesthood for Westminster diocese.

Although I had once lived near Allen Hall, I had no idea what went on there, and so having been accepted to train this was a complete upheaval in his life. I began training in 1981. It was a stimulating time with a vigorous Pope, John Paul II, in office, and a modern looking Rector in situ. The Pope visited Britain and the students assisted at his mass at Wembley Stadium. It was also the time of the Falklands War and I would always remember, Fr Brendan Soane's sermon on the Just War, and I sometimes referred to it in later years when I was preaching.

After two years I was given the choice as to how I should undertake my future training. After taking advice from my Spiritual Director, Fr Ben Morgan, a wise and shrewd cleric, I opted to go to Heythrop College which was on the site of my infant school in Cavendish Square. Here I was exposed to the work of several brilliant scholars including Fr Bob Murray SJ, Fr Francis Walker SJ, and Fr Dickie Price. Back at the seminary Sr Consilio O'Regan was busy finding pastoral placements for students. I spent a year working with the homeless in the East End, and then I became a volunteer for a centre for recovering drug addicts, Elizabeth House. This was situated in Earls Courts and I found himself Chairman of the Management Committee. Later Sr Consilio would have me sent to Kenya. I was lucky to have survived the flight out when the Sudanese Airline plane burst several tyres when landing at Cairo! The sponsoring religious order had insisted we take the cheapest airline.

I was ordained deacon on 29th June 1986 and after some months at Kingsbury Parish under Canon Peter Philips I was ordained priest on 16th May 1987 at the Church of Our Lady of Dolours in Fulham Road.

My first posting was to the Church of Our Lady, St John's Wood. It was a lively busy parish under the leadership of Charles McGowan, a keen golfer. He liked to refer to his golfing forays as 'diocesan business.' I spent much of his time in schools and hospitals. I ran the altar servers and set up football teams in the parish and also in St Christina's Girls School in Primrose Hill. It was a stimulating time.

The area was a cross between rough families and a more upper-class clientele, including a significant American minority. After about five years I decided I should move on and applied to become a prison chaplain. Although I was accepted I turned this down after discussing the matter with Bishop John Crowley, the bishop in charge of newly ordained priests. Instead of prison I ended up in Newman House, the home of the University chaplaincy. I felt I was taking up a post which had formative memories for me.

I worked at the London School of Economics and Queen Mary & Westfield College in Mile End. This was a challenging time for it was the time of the debate over the Ordination of women, and the non-Catholic chaplains were strongly in favour. However, nonetheless, I found the university stimulating intellectually. Around time, I became part of the Jesus Caritas Fraternity which followed the ethos of Charles de Foucauld and through this I became close friends with Canon Charles Walker of the Diocese of Southwark.

In 1996 I went to see Cardinal Hume to seek permission to work in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton since my aging relatives including my mother lived in Hastings. I was in A & B for six years. First, I was based in St Thomas of Canterbury in St Leonards-on-Sea but shortly Bishop Cormac Murphy O'Connor asked me to be Administrator of Holy Redeemer Church in Hollington on the outskirts of Hastings. My predecessor had left suddenly in questionable circumstances and I found that I had been thrown in at the deep end. I was helped at this time by Father Tom Daly, the Pallotine Parish Priest of Hastings. This led to two momentous developments. I joined a creative writing group, and I started going to see a psychotherapist in Brighton. Writing and therapy now became major parts of my life.

In 2001 I applied to return to Westminster Diocese but Cormac now Archbishop of Westminster gave me a three-month sabbatical. I stayed at Boar's Hill Carmelite Priory and it turned out to be a difficult time. I had already had to experience several family bereavements which I necessarily was at the heart of. My sister Georgiana, who had married into a French conservative family with royalist antecedents. (One of her in-laws used to talk about the 'Royal' Navy meaning the French Republican navy!) Georgiana returned to take over my caring responsibilities, while I researched a comparative essay on Evelyn Waugh and the Japanese Catholic novelist, Shushaku Endo. My sabbatical was shattered when I received the news of the tragic death of my niece Russlana in Brighton. I returned to Westminster where I went to live at St John's Wood parish as a guest of my friend Colin Davies. It was a bleak time but through a friend Finny King I was introduced to a lady psychotherapist who worked in south London.

It transpired that she was a Jungian and on reading Memories, dreams and reflections I became converted to the idea of training to be a therapist myself. I would like to have studied at Essex University under the Jungian Andrew Samuels but this was unrealistic and I settled for the local Richmond Adult Community College to study for a counselling diploma under the late Maura O'Sullivan.

Later I transferred to a course led by an Indian lady, Meera Sharma who specialised in Transpersonal Therapy, a school of thought loosely connected with Hinduism. Under Sharma, I had a free hand to write what I wanted and I was able to reflect on my psychological reasons for becoming a priest. I felt it was because my mother was then moving out of my life, and the Puer Aetrnus in me was finding another mother, the Church. I also began to take an interest in the work of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher of religion, and his concept of I-thou and I-It. I was short listed in 2007 for a counselling award in Newcastle where I was runner-up for the south-eastern area. However, the long and the short of it was that I obtained the diploma back at the RACC. I gained several hundred hours of counselling.

Before that, after many months I was offered the post of parish priest of St James's Church, Twickenham. I would have liked a respite because I had only just I had just conducted the funeral of my mother, but the then diocesan VG, Alan Hopes would have nothing of this because my putative predecessor Fr Terence McGuckin was a sick man. How sick he was would only become apparent much later. Another challenge later on was the disagreeable task of raising funds for the Diocese through what was called Growing in Faith.

St James was a pleasant little church down a side road by the Thames and very busy. There was a parish Hall across the road, which would prove to be my first big challenge. The Hall was in a grubby condition and held together by struts to prevent movement to the walls. The original plan was to sell the site for flats and use the money to refurbish church and presbytery. There was a local outcry and the atmosphere was poisonous. The Borough of Richmond Planning Department would not support the plan, and so a new plan was submitted which was passed at a planning meeting which I addressed. For this I was coached by the Sky reporter Colin Brazier who was then a parishioner.

At this time, I was also involved in a project to raise funds for a children's centre in Moldova. I visited the country several times with Deacon Peter Coates of the Diocese of Chisinau who was resident in St James's. With the encouragement of the local bishop, Anton Cosa, we visited the project which was in the town of Bender in breakaway Transdniestria which was under Russian control. Over the years St James's raised about E 30,000. On a separate occasion I travelled for a wedding in Chisinau, the capital, and went on to Ukraine as well.

The defeat of the original building project proved to be a blessing in disguise and a fundraising programme commenced which produced the money and was amazingly productive and enterprising. I supported the programme by publishing a book Mission Impossible, a journey through priesthood, having my beard shaved, and donating my earnings as a counsellor. Balls took place at St Mary's College and teams took part in the Great River Race for three years in succession.

A magnificent porch was built which was bright and airy and a wonderful gathering space. A children's chapel was also built to the side of the main body of the church and a centre behind the church was developed primarily for the sake of parish activities. This was called the Emmanuel Centre after Sr Emmanuel O'Donoghue a stalwart of the parish, but also in deference to King Manuel II of Portugal who had been a parishioner after his exile in 1910. In much of this time my right-hand man was an IT expert and property manager, Paul Hurst. He was tower of strength for many years.

The Portuguese connection was a significant one for the parish. The King was an important parishioner who attended mass here with his wife, Queen Augusta Victoria. When King Manuel died in 1932 the Queen donated a number of sacred vessels to the parish as well as the organ which the King, a considerable instrumentalist, had played. In 2009 a memorial to the King and Queen was erected in the church, and HRH Dom Miguel of Portugal laid a wreath for the Portuguese dead of the Great War. Dom Miguel was the brother of Dom Duarte Pio the Portuguese pretender.

A few years later two stained glass windows, designed by the late Carolin Benyon, were installed. One was in memory of the Portuguese Great War dead, and the second was in memory of the philanthropic war work of King Manuel. The unveiling was undertaken by Field Marshal Lord Guthrie and Bishop Wilson the then area bishop for South-West London. HRH Prince Alexander of Luxembourg a kinsman of the King was also present. That was on 9th April 2018 and a year late a formal plaque was unveiled to celebrate the occasion. The then Portuguese Ambassador addressed the congregation, and a group of Royal Hospital veterans were present. The windows remain the only commemoration of our Portuguese allies in the United Kingdom.

Before then I had to endure the death and burial of my sister, Charmian in a small village on the Ligurian-Tuscan border where she had lived a reclusive life. I went out for this with my elder sister, Georgiana. Local people were extremely kind, but when we consulted my later sister's bank it transpired that she was well off and had not needed to live the life of a pauper.

Thus, what had once seemed a time of hope and glory was suddenly swept away. Bereavement was quickly followed by the tragedy of Covid. It was a hard time, and I strove to keep the parish going through daily prayer messages and an on-line mass masterminded by Stephen Wasmuth and Joe Gumby. Once the epidemic over the parish slowly recovered, with its congregation and finances intact!

A new challenge presented itself in the form of the evangelical movement Alpha. It seemed a good idea to begin with and attracted significant audiences, but I gradually became aware of its autonomy and of its defiance of authority. Eventually a time of discernment was agreed. The leading light of the movement had moved to Teddington, and it was in that parish that Alpha sought to re-establish itself, but for a time it seemed to hanker for a return to St James's.

I came come around to the view that this was not just about personalities but about Alpha itself. I came to the conclusion, that Alpha was in the last resort, Protestant and not Catholic, and perhaps had dubious links with the American right personified for example by Bishop Barron, who at the time of the American election had made dubious comments about Kamala Harris. For me, Catholic thinking meant an attitude to Scripture based on Catholic scholarship, acceptance of the principles of the Second Vatican Council, and following the teaching of Pope Francis through an acceptance of the methodology of the Synod of Bishops. Alpha showed no deference to the teaching of the Church, and while it was called Alpha it had no Omega.

For me now, it was matter of returning to the values of the Second Vatican Council and to the inspiration Pope John XXIII. There should be an acknowledgement of the great scholarship behind the Council, and its establishment of the principle of accepting the concept the ideals of "The People of God", "The signs of the times,'' of relationships with other faiths, and of the social teaching of the Church."

At this time my health began to fail. Although cleared of Parkinsons I was suffering from some form of dyspraxia and my balance was beginning to become erratic. This had become exacerbated by a fall when I fractured my right shoulder.

Recently I had to involve himself in dealings with nearby St Catherine's Catholic Independent school. This was to do with the parish hall in Radnor Road which the school took over at considerable financial gain for the parish. However, the side of the process, the Archdiocese was painfully slow.

I had been a compulsive bibliophile from an early age. Even as a child I devoured copious volumes of history and fiction. My father had a handsome collection of books to which I still returned to in later years. My subsequent adventures in history, theology and psychotherapy led to many new works being added to my shelves. Historical works remained an enduring fascination. Gradually I began writing himself. My works apart from Mission Impossible, a journey through priesthood, included Whispers in the Dark, a selection of homilies, and an historical novel, Roots in Time, from Carnaby to Hackworth. This drew on stories from my mother's family, but also made a nod in the direction of transgenerational therapy.