Cardinal Fernández ordains 1st bishop of UK ordinariate
June 25, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: In a strong show of Vatican support for ordinariates of former Anglicans, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, ordained Father David Waller as the first bishop to serve as ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
The ordinariate ministers to former Anglicans in Great Britain who wished to retain elements of the Anglican patrimony while entering into full communion with the Church. Two other ordinariates minister to former Anglicans in North America and Australia.
The ordination of Bishop Waller in England, like the ordination of Bishop Steven Lopes in the United States in 2016, offers further stability to the structures established by an apostolic constitution of Pope Benedict in 2009. The bishops’ predecessors were former Anglican clergy who were ordained Catholic priests but who, because of their marriages, could not be ordained bishops.
Born in 1961, Bishop Waller is an unmarried former Anglican cleric who entered the Catholic Church and was ordained to the priesthood in 2011.
“We’ve constantly heard rumors that Rome was going to put an end to our ordinariate—that it was just a papal whim which no one wanted,” he said. “Yet this was never the attitude of the Holy See, which has always been supportive and caring. In the eyes of the world, we looked foolish and ridiculous when we risked joining the ordinariate 13 years ago. But no one today regrets doing so.”
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