by Staff Reporter, 26 May 2017
The 10 men are expected to be ordained as priests next year
Cardinal George Pell is to ordain 10 men as deacons for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham next month.
The group includes two men who are in their fifth year of studies for the priesthood and are on course to become the first clergy who have undertaken their entire formation within the ordinariate.
The other eight men are former Anglican priests who have taken a specially designed two-year course.
It is likely the 10 candidates will be ordained to the priesthood next year. They will join 80 clergy serving 50 ordinariate groups in England, Wales and Scotland.
The ordination Mass will take place on Saturday June 17 at St James, Spanish Place. The Mass will be celebrated according to the ordinariate’s distinctive liturgy, Divine Worship. Cardinal Pell, former Archbishop of Sydney and prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, will be the ordaining bishop and will be assisted by Mgr Keith Newton, the ordinary of Britain’s ordinariate.
The Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was formally established in 2011. It followed Anglicanorum coetibus, an apostolic constitution issued by Benedict XVI two years earlier, which allowed Anglicans to become Catholics while still retaining some elements of Anglican patrimony.
The Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter was later established in North America and the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross followed suit in Australia and Japan.