BISHOP MARK JABALÉ, who retired as Bishop of Menevia last October when he reached the age of 75, has been inducted as parish priest in Oxfordshire.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham inducted Fr Jabalé at the small Holy Trin ity Church in Chipping Norton on Friday March 13. In his homily the archbishop said that it was “very rare” for a bishop to be inducted as a parish priest, and that he was the first Benedictine bishop to work in the archdiocese since the death of William Ullathorne OSB, the first Bishop of Birmingham, in March 1889.
John Mark Jabalé OSB was born in 1933 and began his religious life as a Benedictine monk at Belmont Abbey in Herefordshire and was headmaster at Belmont, the school attached to it, from 1969 until 1983. He was sent by Belmont to Peru to build a monastery, the Incarnation in Sullana, after which he was appointed Prior and then Abbot of Belmont.
Pope John Paul II appointed Abbot Jabalé as coadjutor Bishop of Menevia in December 2000.