From the District Superior's Desk, March 2025

Rev. Fr. David Sherry

Father Reid Hennick

I am sorry to announce that Father Reid Hennick, who has been labouring in the Lord’s English and Scottish vineyard for nine years, and who was well-liked and appreciated by many, has decided to leave the Society and return to his native country, where he hopes to join a sedevacantist group. For the record, he was not the man I bumped into at the Nag’s Head.

New Flat in Leicester

The number of faithful Catholics attending Sunday Mass at Saint Anne's church in Leicester has been growing steadily over the last number of years. Most Sundays, a priest travels from London to celebrate the Sunday Mass and then crawls back down the M1. Regularly, a priest from the school in Burghclere kindly fills in. Our hope is to increase the number of Masses offered as well as to allow the priest to spend more time at the church and with the faithful. To facilitate that, we have recently acquired a small apartment about three miles from Saint Anne’s, which will allow the priest to stay over before or after Mass and in due course, to offer Mass on Feast days and on First Fridays and Saturdays. If necessary in the future, the flat can easily be sold. We are very grateful to our generous benefactors, both living and dead, who have made this purchase possible.

Restoration Work in Bristol

During the celebration of Holy Mass, a torrent of grace falls on the souls of the participants and of those for whom the Mass is offered. In Bristol, this can be easily visualised as, following heavy rainfall, water visibly drops on the priest's head during the Holy Sacrifice. And so, due once again to the great generosity of our benefactors, the restoration of our beautiful (but Swiss-cheese-like) property in Bristol will shortly commence. The first stage will concentrate on the church and chaplaincy where significant structural shifting has allowed the elements to penetrate. It is being undertaken by a very reputable company and supervised by our long-term consultants for restoration work. The first phase will cost in the region of £750,000. Prayers and donations will be most gratefully received.

Death of Bishop Richard Williamson

Another of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre has died. His Lordship Bishop Williamson passed away at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate in Kent on 29th January, having received the last sacraments.

Richard Williamson was born in 1940 and grew up in the home counties in a non-practising Anglican family. After attending Winchester and Cambridge, he was led by grace to the unique Body of Christ and received into the Catholic Church in 1971. He entered the Society’s seminary and was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Lefebvre on 29th June 1976. He taught at our seminaries in Switzerland for six years and directed St. Thomas Aquinas seminary in Connecticut and in Minnesota for twenty years, before being rector of our seminary in Argentina for six years. In 2009, in the middle of the Williamson Affair, (he had made some injudicious comments about the Holocaust on Swedish television), he was forced to return to England. Bishop Williamson and the Society parted ways some years ago.

The ancients wisely counsel us, De mortuis, nil nisi bonum — ‘do not speak ill of the dead’. Some weeks after Bishop Williamson’s ejection from Argentina, he asked me to accompany him as chaperone to a gathering in one of the more salubrious areas of London. The dinner party was hosted by a noble lady whose guests were mostly controversial scholars. The bishop at one end of the table addressed his hostess as ‘My Lady’ and she at the other end addressed him as ‘My Lord’. As happens at conventions of controversial scholars, the conversation soon turned to controversial matters and the evils besetting the world. I fully expected Bishop Williamson to be up there with the best of them. Instead, he refused to discuss the various controversies and conspiracies and went so far as to considerably irritate atheistic members of the company with his assertion — ad nauseam for them — that the only solution to the problems of the world was to convert to the living and true God and to return to Jesus Christ and the one Catholic Faith.

May he rest in peace.

D.S.

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