Winds of Renewal

The Pontifical Beda College is celebrating the 120th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's constitution placing the college under the patronage of the Venerable Bede or Beda, one of the most prominent English saints. To mark this date, the college received the visit of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, right after their visit ad limina to the Pope.

The natural tension and expectation right before their arrival soon gave up to a relaxed mood when the bishops intentionally decided to great each student and introduced themselves. I engaged in affable conversations with several of them. When finding out that I was Portuguese, one of them immediately took me to another which had studied at the English College in Lisbon. He tried to impress me with his reasonably good Portuguese accent and recalled with nostalgia the happy years he spent in the Portuguese capital as a seminarian.

Another bishop, when understanding that I was an Anglican, grabbed me by the arm and introduced me to, lo and behold!, an Anglican bishop. The Rt Rev. Richard Foster, Bishop of Portsmouth, integrated the visit to the Pope and mentioned how His Holiness showed his generosity and affability by spending more than two hours in a warm conversation with the English prelates.

With Bishop Christopher Foster

The time came to have dinner. I was honoured to be invited to sit next to Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and senior bishop of the Catholic hierarchy in England. If all the bishops seem quite approachable and well-humoured, Cardinal Nichols was the most of them all. I devised a pragmatic and confident man, driven by clear goals and who appreciates a good joke. He also showed his politeness when approached me and tried to understand what I was doing at the Beda. The number of questions he raised showed me that Cardinal Nichols was not only being polite but that he was genuinely interested in knowing me as a person and how I became an Anglican.

With Cardinal Vincent Nichols

I also had an interesting exchange at the table with a bishop that stood out from the others because of his Panagia, a typical orthodox pectoral cross. Bishop Hlib Lonchyna explained to me he was the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Great Britain, a Church in communion with Rome that uses the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.

With Bishop Hlib Lonchyna

To my enjoyment, I saw how winds of renewal are blowing among the hierarchy and how it is committed to exert its influence both in church and society. There is hope for the Catholics in England.