THE MOTHER church of England is to have a new administrator, replacing Mgr George Stack who has become an auxiliary bishop for Westminster, writes Richard Shaw.
Cardinal Connac MurphyO'Connor has appointed Fr Mark Langham as the new administrator of Westminster Cathedral. Fr Langham was the parish priest at Bayswater and he will be replaced by his assistant there, Fr Alan Robinson.
Fr Langham said: "I'm excited, but daunted. I find it particularly fascinating to think how a cathedral is run and what its role should be in the present day and age.
"The question is how to make it relevant and exciting for the present century. The cathedral has so many levels. It is a parish, yet it has also got a diocesan level as well as a national and even an international level."
Other appointments in the Westminster diocese include that of Canon Paul McGinn, parish priest at New Southgate, who will become the new rector of the seminary at Allen Hall, Chelsea. He will replace the previous rector, Fr James Overton, who will become parish priest at Warwick Street.
Other appointments to the Allen Hall seminary staff, include the nomination of Fr Peter Scott, formerly a hospital chaplain, to the post of pastoral director there, and of Dominican Fr Denis Geraghty OP to the role of spiritual director at the seminary.