A traditionalist order has agreed to take over a landmark church in the Wirral that was closed for worship three years ago.
The
Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) will establish
its first house in England and Wales in Church of Ss Peter and Paul, New
Brighton, later this year.
Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury and
the institute’s general prior, Mgr Gilles Wach, agreed to establish the
foundation in the church, which was closed amid protests three years
ago.
Under the auspices of the traditionalist institute, Ss Peter
and St Paul’s will become a centre for the Extraordinary Form Mass. Mgr
Wach’s institute, headquartered in Gricigliano, near Florence, was given
pontifical approval as a Society of Apostolic Life in 2008 and
celebrates the sacraments according to the older form of the Roman Rite.
They
currently have no houses in England and Wales, but send over priests
from Belgium to say Sunday Mass in four English dioceses.
Bishop
Davies was approached by the institute last year and met Mgr Wach after
Easter to negotiate establishing the foundation.
He also consulted with
his fellow bishops in the North of England, the Patrimony Committee of
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and English
Heritage about the Church’s future.
He re-opened the Dome of Home,
as the Wirral Church is known, earlier this year after his predecessor
closed it in 2008 as being too large and too costly to maintain.
After
a concerted campaign by parishioners, the Vatican ruled in 2009 that
the then Bishop Brian Noble had failed to follow the correct canonical
procedure when closing the church.
It later withdrew the ruling when it
was assured that the parish’s move to a nearby Anglican parish was
temporary.
A diocesan spokesman said: “The members of the
institute will work in close collaboration with Fr Philip Moor, the
parish priest of the Parish of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs, since it
is the wish of Bishop Davies that this shrine church will express the
harmony between the two usages of the one Roman Rite.
“As the Holy
Father, Pope Benedict, reminded us in his 2007 Moto Proprio, Summorum
Pontificum, ‘there is no contradiction between the two editions of the
Roman Missal’, it is the sincere hope of the bishop that this
establishment will foster reconciliation at the heart of the Church: one
of the express aims of the 2007 papal document.
“Finally, the
foundation will ensure that the patrimony of the church building so dear
to Catholics and other members of the local community is secured and
continues to bear witness to the faith and mission of the Church.”