The first seminarian to study for the priesthood in the Personal
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is a married layman, it has been
revealed.Andrew Harding was bestowed with the ministry of lector and acolyte on 25 April by the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, at St John's Seminary, Wonersh in Surrey where he is coming to the end of his training.
If his candidature is accepted by Pope Francis he will become the first married layman to become a priest in the ordinariate - which was created by Pope Benedict XVI for disaffected Anglicans.
The Bishop of Nottingham, Malcolm McMahon said in 2010 that married laymen could not offer themselves for ordination - but that it was possible that married men already in training could be accepted as priests on a case-by-case basis.
Fr James Bradley, communications officer for the ordinariate, said that it is not expected that another married layman will be permitted to become a seminarian in the Ordinariate in the future.