Former Anglican Bishop of London Is Ordained a Roman Catholic Priest
Episcopal News Service. May 5, 1994 [94096]
The former Anglican bishop of London, Graham Leonard, was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church on April 6 and 19 days later was conditionally ordained a Roman Catholic priest.
Citing Apostolicae Curae, the 1896 papal letter that judged Anglican orders invalid, England's Cardinal Basil Hume said that Leonard's conditional ordination "was required out of respect due to the sacrament and the necessity to ensure the validity of the exercise of priestly office."
In an April 26 statement released after Leonard's ordination, Hume said that in the ordination liturgy the church prays that "Almighty God will grant the candidate the grace of the Catholic priesthood in case he has not received it through his ordination in the Anglican Communion."
Hume denied that the reordination required Leonard to completely renounce his former ministry, noting that in 1993 the Roman Catholic bishops in England and Wales said that they "would never suggest that those now seeking full communion with the Roman Catholic church deny the value of their previous ministry."
While firmly restating that the Vatican does not recognize the validity of Anglican orders, Hume did hint that some Anglican clergy who have been ordained in services that included bishops of the Old Catholic Church of the Union of Utrecht might, like Leonard, be conditionally ordained, rather than merely re-ordained. The Roman Catholic church does recognize the validity of Old Catholic orders.
Leonard, a longtime opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion, began a period of preparation for his reception as a Roman Catholic shortly after the Church of England's General Synod voted to ordain women in November 1992.
Although there was initially a great deal of speculation about whether Leonard might eventually be recognized as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, there was no indication of that in Hume's statement.