The actor Simon Callow has threatened to resign as patron of a choir at a top Catholic school following a decision to drop the Terrence Higgins Trust as the nominated charity for a World Aids Day concert.Yesterday it was revealed that the London Oratory school had dropped the trust as beneficiary of the gala event, featuring the school's internationally acclaimed choir, the Schola, because its aims and philosophy were incompatible with Catholicism.
Mr Callow is also a patron of the trust, one of Europe's leading HIV and Aids charities, and said the school's U-turn made it difficult for him to support either the choir or its concert on December 1.
In an email addressed to headmaster David McFadden and seen by the Guardian, Mr Callow said: "If what they tell me is true, you will readily appreciate that I couldn't attend - I'm a patron of the THT. Indeed, I'm afraid I'd have to withdraw as a patron of the Schola: if it's subject to that sort of pressure from the Catholic Church, then I'd find it really hard to endorse it. A hateful situation for you."
Mr McFadden was not available for comment, despite repeated attempts by the Guardian to contact him or a choir spokesman.
In a letter to parents, Mr McFadden outlined the reasons for the change. He said: "The London Oratory school will always want to make sure its charitable fundraising work and its work ... are done with organisations whose philosophy, aims and practices support Christian values. The nominated charity does not meet this criterion, it would be inappropriate for the school to financially support this charity from the proceeds of the concert."
The replacement charity would be Surf, which helped survivors of the Rwandan genocide who had been "deliberately infected" with Aids, he added.
It also emerged last night that one of the priests at Brompton Oratory, the church attached to the school, was cared for by the THT in the late 90s.
Father David Martin, who was 44, was appointed chaplain and governor at the leading Roman Catholic state school after his ordination into the Fathers of the London Oratory.
The school, which has close links with the religious order but is not controlled by it, said it had did not known that Fr Martin was HIV-positive.
However, three years after being accepted as a novice at the Oratory, the priest informed Fr Michael Scott Napier, the then provost, that he had become HIV-positive.
Hal St John Broadbent, who is director of the London Oratory Schola Foundation, which raises funds for the choir, told the Guardian: "The reasons are less the incompatibility of the activities of the Terrence Higgins Trust with the Catholic objectives of the school and more concern that certain rightwing elements in the Catholic community would expose a more embarrassing incompatibility which they have threatened to do, namely, that one of the Oratory fathers themselves died from the AIDS virus."
Mr Broadbent said it was against Catholic social teaching to make a "scapegoat of an organisation" that endeavoured to "relieve the pain suffered by those who have contracted the virus".
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