Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

Darlington Mission

5 October 2025 – Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Group Pastor – Fr. Thomas Mason – thomas.mason@ordinariate.org.uk  – 01833 631457 – 07876 308657

Assistant Priest – Fr. Ian Westby        Deacon – the Rev’d Carl Watson

Web: https://www.ordinariate-darlington.co.uk

Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/OrdDarlFacebook

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrdDarlington  

Services this week:

Sunday 5, 5pm, Barnard Castle – October Devotions

Monday 6, 6.15pm, Barnard Castle (Latin) – S. Bruno

Tuesday 7, 10am, Gainford – Our Lady of the Rosary

Thursday 9, 10am, Barnard Castle – S. John Henry Newman

Thursday 9, 7pm, Barnard Castle (Ordinariate) – S. John Henry Newman

Friday 10, 12noon, Gainford (Ordinariate) – S. Paulinus (preceded by Sext at 11.45am)

Friday 10, 6-7pm, Barnard Castle – Holy Hour

Confessions (at Barnard Castle): Monday 5.30-6pm, Thursday 5.30-6pm,

Saturday 10-11am

Prayer List:

Of your charity please pray for all the sick, especially: Morag, Ethel, George Gwilliam, Andrew Gwilliam, Fay Jackson, Dennis Walburn, Elaine Robertson, Barbara Ugoletti, Andrea Matthews, Bridget Wright, Graham Pegley, Calvert Hardy, James Hardy, Keith McAllister, Elizabeth Rawling, Charlie Camilleri, Pauline McAllister, Paul Laughlin.

As also for all the faithful departed, particularly the recently departed, as well as those whose years-mind falls at this time including Ruth Carreras, Margaret Alderson, Matthew Snowdon, Caroline Sleap, Gareth Walburn, William Barker. Requiescant in pace.

Month of the Rosary. As we enter into October, a reminder that this month is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Last week, Pope Leo called on all Catholics to pray the rosary daily during this month. The usual rosary and benediction will be held on the Sundays of October at Barnard Castle, at 5pm.

Second Collection. Today the annual collection for the Clergy Relief Fund remains open, this will provide retirement income for Ordinariate Priests – do please be generous.

Dates for your diary. We have two additional celebrations coming up:

This Thursday, 9 October, the feast of S. John Henry Newman, our Patron, sung Mass with the blessing of a new icon at 7pm.

Saturday 18 October, S. Luke’s Day, the Rudgate Singers will be coming to Barnard Castle for a choral Mass at midday.

Universalis Ecclesiæ – or happy birthday to the Diocese

Last Monday saw the 175 anniversary of the foundation of the Diocese of Hexham & Newcastle (originally known simply as Hexham), and along with it of 12 other new Dioceses in England and Wales – a moment called the restoration of the hierarchy, as this was the first time since the Reformation that we had Dioceses here in England. An important moment in the resurgence of the Catholic Church in this country.

The first we hear of English (or to be more strictly correct Romano-British) Bishops is when four attended the local council of Arles in 314; then as the Anglo-Saxons were evangelised a network of Bishops and Dioceses was set up in the seventh century. With some adjustments after the Norman Conquest this continued until the Reformation (including our own S. Osmund as Bishop of Salisbury 1078-1099). The last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Pole, died in 1588 mere hours after Queen Mary.

In the following years the remaining Catholics were heavily persecuted which meant that a normal system of Bishops and Dioceses was entirely impossible. At first Rome gave a Priest the title ‘Archpriest’ and with it the power to govern missions in England; then from 1623 a Bishop was appointed, but not given a diocese, instead he governed directly in the name of the Pope as a Vicar Apostolic. The persecution meant that there were few Catholics, with few Priests to minister to them, and a great secrecy covering the whole project as even to be ordained a Priest or to give a Priest a hiding place was sufficient to sent to the gallows.

The legal restrictions on Catholics were significantly eased in the early nineteenth century, and at the same time numbers rose sharply. This was a time of large-scale migration from Ireland, and of conversions from Anglicanism (most notably including our own patron, S. John Henry Newman). By this time, there were eight ‘Districts’ each having a Vicar Apostolic looking after it.

There had been a number of attempts to restore the more normal pattern of Diocese, but the strongly anti-Catholic attitude of the government as well as divisions within English Catholicism had prevented it. As part of the attempts, it had even been suggested that the government would be able to veto the choice of Bishops – fortunately that proposal never needed to be implemented. By 1850 Pope Pius IX considered that conditions were now stable and free enough to create new Diocese, which could build up the mission of the Church in this land.

Pope Pius issued the bull (the name for the type of papal legislation used) Universalis Ecclesiæ (from its opening in Latin – “the power of ruling the universal Church”); it created Westminster with an Archbishop and twelve other Dioceses covering the whole of England and Wales. Notably it did not recreate the pre-Reformation dioceses, which would still have been illegal. For many Catholics this was a moment of joy representing a new future for the Church in this country.

The response was not universally happy, and anti-Catholic protests were held, including burning effigies of Cardinal Wiseman (the new Archbishop of Westminster). The Prime Minister publicly denounced the insolence of the ‘Papal aggression’, and Parliament passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, which banned any non-Anglican episcopal titles – though no prosecutions followed and the act was later repealed.

The move allowed Catholicism to live in a more normal fashion, and reflected its move out of the shadows of persecution. As Cardinal Wiseman wrote “Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament.” We can give thanks to our forebears who kept the faith during the times of persecution, and of those who while not formally persecuted nonetheless still laboured in incredibly hostiles times, we have inherited so much from them and should treasure their memory. – Fr. Thomas.