On 25 March 1882 Bishop Bernard O’Reilly, the third Bishop of Liverpool, wrote to the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda as follows:

William J. Walsh, a name no longer familiar to people, was in his lifetime so long and so vividly associated with the struggle for educational, social and political equality on behalf of the majority population in Ireland that his death seemed to mark the passing of an institution rather than of a man. For more than thirty years he was the leading voice of the Irish hierarchy, and his wide interests and penetrating intelligence found expression in many books and in an almost unending flow of letters to newspapers on topics as varied as education, theology, canon law, social justice, human rights, bimetallism, the environment, and arbitration. A poor preacher, he made the press his pulpit, so much so that irreverent Dublin wits termed him ‘Billy the lip’. His standing and influence was such that at his death the lord mayor of Dublin, Laurence O’Neill, felt moved to the extravagant observation that he was ‘the greatest archbishop of Dublin since St. Laurence O’Toole’. The remarkable fact that the coffin of an archbishop was draped in a tricolour, even as ‘the Troubles’ raged, spoke more emphatically than words how he was viewed by the nationalist population.

From 12 April 1822 when John Henry Newman was elected a Fellow until 3 October 1845 when he tendered his resignation to Provost Hawkins, Oriel College was to be the centre of Newman's life. As Newman later recorded:

Newman went on to assert that but for Oriel, he would have been nobody, entirely lacking in influence. It was through Oriel (and the pulpit of the Oriel living of St. Mary the Virgin) that he was able to exert such a dominant religious and pastoral influence on his academic generation and those that followed. It was through Oriel that he would be in a position to emerge by 1833 as the well-known leader of that great movement of religious revival in the Church of England known as the ‘Oxford Movement’ or ‘Tractarianism’ (the name being coined in consequence of the series of Tracts for the Times published by Newman and his cohorts).

While still a novice, the English Jesuit Charles Plater (1875–1921), through his energy, brilliance, enthusiasm and attractive personality was influential in the foundation of the Catholic Social Guild and other social projects. In particular, he motivated the establishment of retreat houses for working men within the Catholic Church in England, work which he described in his book Retreats for the People. This volume attracted the attention of many within the Church of England, encouraging a number of initiatives which, among other things, led to a significant growth in the numbers of Anglicans who made a retreat and to the establishment of diocesan retreat houses.

Born at the small Highland farm of Belachknockan in Glenlivet on 18 September 1805, Paul Maclachlan was the second of John Maclachlan and Helen Grant’s sons to be educated for the priesthood. There were already clergy kinsmen from Banffshire, a county which produced many priests for the increasingly industrial Lowlands of Scotland. Two James Maclachlans had attended the nearby seminary of Scalan, and Paul Maclachlan and his brother John, the older by nineteen months, were sent to the successor college of Aquhorties in Aberdeenshire. Paul, who won renown for his high intellectual qualities, entered the Lowland District seminary nine months ahead of his older brother on 17 March 1819. In January 1821 he was in the second class studying Caesar under the future Bishop James Kyle, while John was a year behind with the Rev. James Sinnott and Cornelius Nepos.

A little over two weeks after the commencement of the First World War, the Catholic Church was left without its universal shepherd at a time of immense upheaval. Pope Pius X died on 20 August 1914 and immediately, the cardinals of the Catholic Church made their way to Rome to elect his successor. In the conclave, the choice fell on Giacomo della Chiesa, Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, who took the name of Benedict XV. Della Chiesa had been a student of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, the Secretary of State under Leo XIII. His essential training had been in diplomacy and this made him well qualified to cope with the war. Immediately upon his accession, Benedict adopted a policy of impartiality and advocated an immediate peace by negotiation. His various peace efforts were ignored, however, and many Catholics in various European countries gave only lukewarm support or made clear an outright rejection of the Pope’s pronouncements on diplomacy. This article concentrates on the reaction of British Catholics, in particular, to Benedict XV’s peace appeals during the war, including his Peace Note of 1917.

In 1797 Trinidad became a British possession and, by 1889, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago had become a single political entity. In this article, however, discussion will be confined to Trinidad, rather than to Trinidad and Tobago, since the history of the two islands differed significantly in regard to Catholic education.

Richard Downey on becoming Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool in 1928 seems to have anticipated The Tablet’s admonition. Downey indeed seems to have begun his episcopate (1928–1953) with a determination to change the public perception of Catholicism in his diocese and in the city of Liverpool in particular. In late twentieth century terminology he engaged in a ‘re-branding exercise’. He withdrew support for a specifically Catholic political party in Liverpool, which had been favoured by his predecessor Archbishop Keating. He emphasised the civic commitment and the ‘Englishness’ of the Catholic community, moderating the impression that the Catholic community in Liverpool was essentially Irish. Thus although St. Patrick’s Day would continue to be celebrated, so would St. George’s Day. Additionally the blessings conferred on the world by the British Empire would be fulsomely acknowledged. Catholics would be seen to be part of the mainstream community contributing to its fullness and development. They would cease to be perceived as an alien irritant in the body politic.

Arthur Hinsley was born in 1865 at Carlton, near Selby, in Yorkshire. Educated and trained for the priesthood at St. Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, and the Venerable English College, Rome, he was ordained for the Diocese of Leeds in 1893 and immediately returned to Ushaw as a professor. In 1898 he became a curate at St. Anne’s Church, Keighley and from 1900 to 1904 was the founding headmaster of St. Bede’s Grammar School, Bradford. Following a disagreement with Bishop William Gordon of Leeds he was incardinated into the Diocese of Southwark in late 1904 and served as rector at Sutton Park near Guildford and at Sydenham. In 1917 Hinsley was appointed Rector of the Venerabile and in 1928 was sent to Africa as Apostolic Visitor charged with assessing and reporting on the state of Catholic missionary education in the British colonies. While in Africa he remained Rector of the English College but resigned from this post in 1930 when he was appointed as the first Apostolic Delegate to the British colonies in Africa. He remained in Africa until an attack of paratyphoid forced him to retire and return to Rome in 1934. On his retirement he was given a sinecure as a Canon of St. Peter’s Basilica. Hinsley had been created a Domestic Prelate to Pope Benedict XV in 1917 when he was appointed to the Venerabile. In 1926 he was consecrated titular Bishop of Sebastopolis and when he returned to Africa in 1930 he became titular Archbishop of Sardis.