The Bishop with a passion to abolish poverty

IT was a happy coincidence that in the week Pope Paul
issued his now famous Encyclical on poverty he also named Bishop Charles Grant as the new Bishop of Northampton. One of the Bishop's burning ambitions is to see the Church make great inroads on poverty. He is chairman of the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development which last year raised £100,000 from "Family Fast Day" for underdeveloped countries.
The Bishop is 60 and he has been auxiliary in his new diocese since 1961. Northampton became vacant earlier this year when Bishop Parker resigned, and at the time I predicted that Bishop Grant would succeed.
He was educated at St. Edmund's College. Ware, at Cambridge and the Gregorian University in Rome where he took a degree in Canon Law. In 1938 he started parish work at Cambridge, moved to Ely after five years, and two years later became parish priest of Kettering in Northants. He stayed there until his consecration.
Friends of the Bishop speak of his "tremendous interest in others." He is a regular visitor to Lourdes where he was a brancardie until he became a bishop. After that the powersthat-be there suggested that it would be unbecoming for him to carry a stretcher. He agreed — reluctantly.
A well-thumbed volume in his bookcase is the collected Documents of the Second Vatican Council. He is determined to put these into effect, especially the Decree on the Church in the Modern World.
Canon Gerard Collins, administrator of Northampton Cathedral, and a close friend of the Bishop since 1944 describes him as "patient, gentle and kind beyond measure."
Canon. "He goes to any length person I've ever met," says the anon. "He goes to any length to get people out of difficulties and has the most sympathetic relationship with his clergy. I know its trite to say he sees the best in everybody, but with him it's terribly true."
Politically the Bishop is a non-party man. "He looks at whatever is done according to whether or not it's for the good of all the people," Canon Collins says.
All of which augers well for Northampton.