CAMBRIDGE - 23 November 2006 - 575 words
Cambridge
Catholic Chaplaincy appeals for funds
The Archbishop of Westminster, the papal nuncio and the Duke of
Norfolk are among those attending the launch next week of an appeal
for Cambridge University's Roman Catholic chaplaincy. The Fisher
House Appeal hopes to raise an endowment of £2,000,000.
The Duke of Norfolk's ancestors helped establish the chaplaincy
in 1896, when Rome allowed Catholics to return to Oxford and Cambridge
after a gap of 300 years, forty years after the statutory bar
on non-Anglicans taking Cambridge degrees was lifted. In 1924
Norfolk's ancestor helped buy the medieval inn which is the chaplaincy's
present home. Fisher House is named after St John Fisher, Cambridge's
most distinguished Catholic figure, who was executed by Henry
VIII.
The appeal is being launched on Tuesday 28 November at the Travellers'
Club in London, where Mgr Alfred Gilbey, chaplain from 1932 to
1965, a colourful and somewhat controversial character, lived
out his remaining thirty-three years after resigning from the
chaplaincy.
Finding the money to pay the bills and maintain the building has
from the outset been the responsibility of the Cambridge University
Catholic Association, an organisation of dons and Catholic graduates.
But as the numbers of those using the chaplaincy increases, due
to the highly effective work of successive chaplains and rising
graduate admissions, so do the expenses, and a strong endowment
is now urgently needed to ensure that Fisher House has a guaranteed
future. To date over £600,000 has been raised in gifts
and pledges. It is hoped that those present at the launch will
help bring the total closer to the first million pounds.
Fisher House today caters for all Catholic members of the university.
Sunday congregations total more than 400. Courses of various
kinds take place every night of the week during term. The chaplaincy
is in constant use, remaining open even during vacations for the
dons and graduate students.
Fr Alban McCoy, the current chaplain, takes seriously his duty
of ensuring that instruction be given at a suitable academic level.
Apart from being a skilful preacher, (and an excellent cook)
he offers lively and well-attended weekly talks entitled 'Catholicism
for the Curious', some of which have been incorporated into two
lucid and accessible books: An Intelligent Person's Guide to
Catholicism and An Intelligent Person's Guide to Christian
Ethics.
Enjoying "the happiest, most rewarding and stimulating apostolic
work" that has been entrusted to him in thirty-one years
of priesthood, his hope is "to send out young men and women
who are generously open to the needs of the wider world as well
as being confident and grounded in their faith."
From ambassadors and politicians to chemists and literary critics;
from doctors and lawyers to priests and social workers,
Fisher House's influence reaches throughout the world. Edward
Stourton of the BBC, remembers "the silent reproach"
the building sometimes offered. "I suppose I thought of
it as being rather like that thread in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead
which God twitches from time to time to bring wayward young men
and women to heel!" A 2001 graduate, Anna Wilkins, who works
as a doctor in palliative care, looks back on Fisher House as
"a second home", "somewhere down-to-earth and familiar",
where she was given tools of discrimination which serve her well
in her medical work with the dying, and whose impact in her personal
life has been irreplaceable "socially, academically and spiritually".
For more information see: www.fisherhouse.org.uk
© Independent Catholic
News 2006
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