Jesuits to take over Oxford University chaplaincy

BY ANNA ARCO
THE rEsurrs are going to take over the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy in January, it has emerged.
When Fr Jeremy Fairhead, the current university chaplain, leaves for Rome in January 2008, he will be succeeded by Fr John Moffatt SI and Roger Dawson who will be ordained in July. Chaplains are appointed to the university by the body of English bishops.
"It is a hard job and a serious one," said Fr Fairhead, referring to the chaplaincy, where he has been since 2002. Previously, he served as chaplain at the University of London and he will be taking up a post in the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants in the department which deals with pastoral care for students.
Fr Moffatt, who takes over from him, is no stranger to university or to the duties of pastoral care for students. He was educated at Oxford as an undergraduate and later read theology at the Jesuit permanent private residence, Campion Hall. He currently serves as chaplain to St Ignatius College in the north London borough of Enfield and recently published a book for "questioning Catholics".
The Jesuits have been key players in the university's Catholic history. St Aloysius, Oxford's first Catholic church after the Reformation, was served by Jesuits from the 1870s to the 1980s. Gerard Manley Hopkins, the famous poet-priest, served as a priest there. It has now been tiaken over by the Oratorians.
Campion Hall, which is for priests, seminarians and religious attending the university, was founded in 1896, the same year in which the chaplaincy was established to care for the pastoral needs of Catholic students.
Until 1896, Catholic families in England were discouraged from sending their children to Oxford or Cambridge, as Cardinal Henry Manning thought they were corrupt ing influences. Growing demands from Catholic parents caused the Bishops of England and Wales to write to Pope Leo XHI with a petition to end the ban on Catholics going to the old universities.
Up to that point, undergraduates who ignored the ban went to St Aloysius, where the Oxford University Catholic Club, now the Newman Society, was founded and based.
Leo XILI allowed the ban to be lifted, on the condition that Catholic undergraduates attended lectures in philosophy, history and religion given by Catholic professors. So the Oxford chaplaincy was born. Its third chaplain, Fr Basil Maturin, was a Jesuit, and many others followed. One of the chaplaincy's most famous chaplains was the renowned wit, Mgr Ronald Knox. Fr Fairhead's predecessor was Fr Peter Newby who is now the parish priest at St Mary Moorefield's in London.
University chaplaincies have not had it easy in recent years. Lack of funds and a shortage of secular priests as well as the all-consuming nature of the job have made it difficult to keep them running. Cambridge University's Catholic Chaplaincy has had to run an appeal for funding, as it is entirely dependent on the donations of the university's Catholic Society and investments it has been able to make with the endowments it receives.