A bishop has entrusted a parish in the English city of York to the care of the Oratorian Fathers.Bishop Terence Drainey of Middlesbrough has invited the Fathers of the Oxford Oratory to oversee St Wilfrid’s, the mother church of the city of York.
The parish also has the care of the shrine of St Margaret Clitherow, martyred for her Catholic faith in 1586 during the Reformation.
The Congregation of the Oratory was founded by St Philip Neri in Rome in 1575 and brought to England by Blessed John Henry Newman in 1848.
There are already three Oratories in England, in Birmingham, London and Oxford, and a fourth is being set up in Manchester.
Fr Richard Duffield will be the parish priest of St Wilfrid’s, starting at the end of October.
He was born in York in 1963 and brought up in the city. He joined the Birmingham Oratory in 1986 and transferred to the newly founded Oxford Oratory in 1991.
He was Provost of the Birmingham Oratory from 2009 to 2011, a period which included the visit of Benedict XVI for the beatification of John Henry Newman.
In a statement the Fathers of the Oxford Oratory said they “would like to thank Bishop Drainey and the Middlesbrough diocese for their generosity and confidence and look forward to starting work in Yorkshire”.