Bishops' Diaries

SCHOOLS and Catholic colleges are, as ever, a focus of the bishops' activities in the coming week.
Bishop Patrick Kelly of Salford will spend Thursday and Friday at St Margaret Mary's School, Moston, and St Clare's School, Blackley, respectively. Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville of Birmingham goes to St John Fisher School, Newcastleunder-Lyme, on Wednesday and St Margaret Ward School, Tunstall, the next day. Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth blesses and opens a new sixth form building at Oaklands Comprehensive School, Waterlooville, on Saturday.
Bishop John Jukes OFM, auxiliary in Southwark, begins his Wednesday at Sacred Heart School, Tunbridge Wells, and ends it commissioning chaplains at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
His fellow auxiliary, Bishop Howard Tripp, meets the governors of Digby Stuart College on Tuesday evening. On Friday Bishop John Crowley, auxiliary in Westminster, gets together with heads of religious education in schools in his area.
Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, the member of the hierarchy with an overview of schools' policy, is in Liverpool on Sunday attending an education conference.
On Monday he travels south to London for a gathering of the bishops' conference department on education and formation (where he will be joined by Bishop Daniel Mullins of Menevia), and the next day he heads off for Rome to contribute to the commission for the preparation of the Universal Catechism meeting in Rome.
Bishop John Brewer of Lancaster plays host to Bishop Edward Daly of Derry on Sunday. Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool on Wednesday evening attends the British Telecom Concert in his city's Philharmonic Hall Bishop Leo McCartie of Northampton is present at a vocations' weekend at Princes Risborough this week, while Bishop Cormac Murphy O'Connor of Arundel and Brighton joins fellow church leaders in Chichester Cathedral on Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Her Majesty the Queen.
Coining soon
CAFOD, the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, is to hold a public launch for its education campaign on Latin America, "Land, Hope...and Glory?" on Thursday February 20 at 7 pm at the Abbey Community Conference Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, London SW IP 3BU. For further details contact Mariue Elena Arana on 071-733 7900.
THE Young Christian Workers chaplains' conference will be held at Loyola Hall in London from February 13-14. For details contact David Streeton on 081458 8416.
THE Worldwide Marriage Encounter Community of England and Wales will be holding its 6th national convention at Haven/Warners Holiday centre in Caister on Sea, Great Yarmouth, over the weekend of March 27-29. The weekend, which is open to all couples, priests and religious who have taken part in a marriage encounter, engaged encounter or choice weekend, will be attended by Bishop Mervyn Alexander of Clifton. For more details contact Richard and Chris Leek on 0602 734541.
THE Irish support and advice centre is hosting the annual St Patrick's variety concert in the Wembley Conference Centre on March 14. For more details and tickets phone 081-846 8036.
Obituaries
TWO of Britain's most gifted and successful Benedictine monks, Dom George Temple and Dom Sylvester Houedard, have died recently.
Dom George Temple, of Quarr Abbey, who was 90, was a leading mathematician who became a monk in his later years.
Dom George, who played a large role in linking the disciplines of mathematics and physics for 50 years before retiring to the Benedictine monastery where he spent his later years, achieved his first chair the professorship in mathematics at King's College, London just seven years after starting work as a lab technician.
One of his main areas of research was the quantum theory, and he also worked on aircraft problems during the Second World War.
He was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford between 1953-68.
Educated at Ealing County School, Dom George became a Catholic at the age of 18 and was inspired throughout his academic life by his faith.
During his time at King's College, London, and later during his time at Oxford, he was very involved with Catholic chaplaincy affairs.
Along with his wife Dorothy he became a friend of the Benedictines of Quarr, on the Isle of Wight, and asked to be admitted to the monastery a year after her death in 1979. He was ordained three years later,
Dom Sylvester Houedard, who was a member of the community at Prinknash, earned his claim to fame as a poet. Born Pierre Sylvester Houedard in 1924, he became an exponent of the concrete poetry movement.
Dom Sylvester, who became a Benedictine monk in 1949, was well-known in the 1960s for his practice of concrete or "hightech" poetry, which made full use of typewriters and computers. He specialised in the many-layered one liner, such as his famous "Catch a white man by his manifestoe" which was arranged interestingly across a page. In his religious life he was particularly interested in ecumenism, especially Oriental religion, and he formed a warm friendship with exiled Tibetan monks, who became a common sight at Prinknash.
Dom Sylvester's published works included Yes-No in 1963, Frog-Pond Plop in 1965, En Trance in 1969 and Begin Again: A Book of Reflections and Reversals in 1975.
TEACHER Sr Anna Shields, who worked most recently as a member of the religious education department at the English Martyrs School in Leicester, has died.
Sr Anna, a member of the Congregation of Sisters of St Joseph of Peace, was born in Airdrie in 1937 and entered her community in 1959. She taught at St Mary's School, Grimsby for six years before going on to St Charles Special School in Carstairs in Lanarkshire for a year and then on to Burslem, Staffordshire in 1973.
PRIESTS and people from all areas of Clifton diocese took part in the requiem mass for Fr Patrick McGovern, who died recently at the age of 80.
Fr McGovern, who was born in Cork, trained for the priesthood at St John's College, Waterford, and was ordained in 1937.
He was appointed as curate to St Nicholas' Church in Bristol, which was followed by spells in Weston-super-Mare, Swindon, Caine, Tewkesbury, Combe Down Bath, Chipping Sodbury and Dursley. He retired to Bath in 1985.