Around 700 former clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales or Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992, including 16 former Anglican bishops and two “continuing” Anglican bishops.
From 1992 to 2025, five Anglican permanent deacons and 486 Anglican priests were ordained in the Catholic Church.
The report shows that 29 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy, while 35 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.
Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain: The role of the St Barnabas Society by Stephen Bullivant, Fernanda Mee and Janet Mellor is published by the St Barnabas Society and the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.
It reveals that by comparison, just 9 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy and 19 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.
The Church of England General Synod voted to ordain women priests in 1992, and the first women were priested in 1994
In the foreword, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, acknowledges that the movement of clergy from the Church of England into full communion with the Catholic Church in recent times is a story of many parts and says that until now, those parts have not been drawn together.
“In reading this report, one question has kept returning to my mind. It circulates around the word ‘convert’,” he writes.
He describes the journeys of the convert clergy as “not so much a turning away or rejection of their rich and precious Anglican heritage but an experience of an imperative to move into the full visible communion of the Catholic Church, in union with the See of Peter.”
The report says the decision to become a Catholic is often a “step into the unknown” and the journey to Rome was often done in groups.
“There is strength, and moreover courage and resolve, in numbers. Interviews with those who became Catholics in those periods reveal that discernment often occurred within and among groups, whether formally, or in informal networks of clergy friends. Even then, given the sensitive nature of the subject, not least with regard to their current Anglican diocesan bishop and their parish congregation, such discernment was often kept secret until it could be made official, even from closest relatives. Two separate interviewees, a father and son, recounted how they surprised each other with their respective resolutions to join the Ordinariate.”