Sunday, March 11, 2012

Archbishop Establishes Shrine of St Augustine

Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark has formally established Pugin’s church of St Augustine in Ramsgate as a shrine of the ‘the Apostle of the English’. In an official decree the Archbishop grants the shrine canonical privileges and designates it as a place of pilgrimage.
The establishment of this new pilgrimage site fills a five hundred year gap created when the last shrine of Augustine was destroyed in the 16th century. A shrine to St Augustine existed on the Isle of Thanet before the Reformation and so this new place of pilgrimage recovers an ancient tradition. St Augustine’s is a Catholic church already dedicated to the saint and stands closer than any other to the place of Augustine’s landing, his first preaching and his momentous encounter with King Ethelbert of Kent in 597AD. read more

3 comments:

Gigi said...

That's lovely; and announced with your customary understated sense of momentum Father Ray!

watcher said...

Gay militant disrupting Holy Mass in Teignmouth.

Anita Moore said...

St. Aethelberht of Kent, whom St. Augustine of Canterbury converted, is among my favorite obscure (at least in the U.S.) saints. May they both intercede for England, now up to her neck in the rising flood.

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