Director of Caritas Salford to retire

Mark Wiggin

The Director of Caritas Salford is stepping down from his post at the end of this month - after eleven years in the role. Mark Wiggin, has led the social justice mission of the Diocese of Salford through the delivery of social care services and advocacy, deepened by Catholic Social Teaching. Operational services have been provided through a workforce of 130 staff and a £3.5 million budget...

Before his current job, Mark was Director of Catholic Care, the social welfare agency in the Diocese of Leeds, for five years. He was responsible for the governance, strategic direction and quality of services provided through a workforce of 163 staff. He also spent eight years as Assistant Director of Caritas Care in the Diocese of Lancaster.

Overseas, Mark did 10 years pastoral work with the Archdiocese of Gulu in Northern Uganda and the Archdiocese of Liverpool. As a volunteer with the Volunteer Missionary Movement from 1978 he taught in a Seminary for three years in Gulu before studying for an M.A in African History at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

He also worked in the Archdiocese of Liverpool with Pauline his wife at Clitheroe, Lancashire, in a residential pastoral centre for young people from Merseyside before specialising in community work with disabled people.

Mark says: "Working for the Church through its diocesan and Caritas agencies has given me a great insight into the role the Church plays and more importantly can play in the community and public square. There is an enormous amount of good done through the expression of charity at local and parish level and our schools have really taken up putting the principles of Catholic Social Teaching into practice. Specialised charities working in prisons, modern day slavery and a host of other issues are reaching out every day to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. These good works need to be promoted and supported more especially in a world that is becoming more and more secularised where Faith is given less and less space to express itself and be seen as a force of good.

As the Director of Caritas Salford, I have developed a 'Refugee Response' to the call of Pope Francis that communities and parishes should open up and welcome refugees and those seeking sanctuary.

Caritas Refugee Response in the Diocese of Salford was the first NGO outside of Canada to adopt the Community Sponsorship of Refugees model and bring in a Syrian family to the UK.

Retirement seems an odd word to describe my next steps. I very much hope I will continue to support the social mission of the Church through my voluntary work. I have never seen my working career as anything other than a vocation and a privilege to serve."