Catholic Church in London--ASH Wednesday

I’m not Catholic so have no experience with their services, but the Brompton Oratory is an impressive building.
https://www.bromptonoratory.co.uk/

Westminster Cathedral in Francis St, Westminster is the Mother Church for RCs in England and Wales. There is a website which lists the locations of Catholic Churches in London, which isn’t quite as Anglican as it used to be.

are there particular access needs?

For me, Westminster Cathedral (note- NOT abbey- this is a different house of worship) is the most beautiful Catholic church in London. Even for those who are not religious there are lovely mosaic tiles to enjoy.

Westminster Cathedral is accessible. And while Ash Wednesday is not a day of Obligation, the Cathedral website cautions that attendance is high for all Masses that day. So plan to go early to get a seat. Schedules should be posted a couple of weeks in advance .

It looks like from the itinerary the Wednesday is Day 4. You are in the Westminster area doing a walk, a tour of Westminster Abbey and then later the Churchill War Rooms which are near the Abbey.

I’d recommend you call the RS Europe office to check on timings. They will have reservations for Westminster Abbey and the War Rooms so should be able to tell you the basic breakdown on this day. Someone mentioned Westminster Cathedral which is also in this area so perhaps their schedule of times for mass that day will line up with your free time.

Lapsed Catholic who always lights a candle in a different Catholic Church for my mother . Must say I remember liking the Catholic Church of Immaculate Confession in Mayfair. If memory serves its near ritzy Connaught Hotel. Lots to see inside.

https://www.farmstreet.org.uk/It’s

AlanBush, your hotel will be able to help you find a Catholic church in the neighborhood. There is also an app that I have found helpful: Catholic Mass Times. It's not infallible (heh, heh,) but it has helped me find Catholic churches and services more often than not.

Or the suggestion of Westminster Cathedral is a good one.

I attended Sunday Mass at St Anselm Church. It is near the British Museum. We stayed at the Hilton West End and it was just one block away.

Any suggestions for an accessible Catholic Church in Anglican London?

Can you specify what you mean by “accessible”? In UK English, “accessible” tends to relate to ramps, wide doorways, disability needs etc. Or do you mean “accessible” in terms of being friendly? Or easy to get to from where you’re staying? (Which is where?)

London is really not what I’d call Anglican - it’s one of the most diverse cities on the planet!

My suggestion would be Brompton Oratory, which is a beautiful big church in Knightsbridge (near Harrods & Harvey Nicks) but you will find a nearby RC church wherever you’re based.

The Italian Church in Clerkenwell always intrigued me. I've never been in, but I've been past when they've had weddings and they looked like they were having fun.

https://www.italianchurch.org.uk/

Golden Girl! is right that there will be a Catholic church near where you are. I can think of several within a mile or two of me. I think the congregations themselves out here are fairly diverse, probably the most observant Catholics coming with Polish or Nigerian heritage around here.

Westminster Cathedral would be a good bet. There's places of worship of all sorts of denominations in London, but there's lots of Catholic churches.

I've been surprised to find that, wherever we're staying in London, I've always been able to find a Roman Catholic church in easy walking distance of our hotels. When we first started visiting London regularly, I was sure I'd have trouble. Nope.

There are some more detailed suggestions here.
https://theplaceswherewego.com/catholic-mass-london/

I'm genuinely interested, why do people think it would be difficult to find catholic churches in London?

I'm a seriously lapsed catholic, but a lot of my friends still go to mass, and it's not something I have really thought about.
We have every possible variety of religious institution in London. They might not be as visited as they once were but they are still there.

If you have an interest in religious art and churches in general, it might be worth looking at this site before a future trip.
https://friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/about-us/

Friends of Friendless churches is a wonderful small charity that does a lot to preserve historic and neglected churches from falling into disrepair. They tend to be in more rural locations where populations have declined. The history and often ancient religious art they contain is really astounding.

I'm genuinely interested, why do people think it would be difficult to find catholic churches in London?

Emma, just ignorance, and I do not mean that to be insulting; I myself was surprised at how easy it is to find Catholic churches. Henry VIII and all that....

I myself was surprised at how easy it is to find Catholic churches. Henry VIII and all that....

A long way from the original subject, but many towns and cities outside of London have architecturally interesting post-war Catholic churches, and a lot of it I think has to do with immigration patterns I think. A lot of immigration from Ireland particularly necessitated a lot more Catholic churches.

See for example Clifton Cathedral in Bristol and of course Liverpool’s RC Cathedral.

Oh, out of interest, apparently Catholics make up about 10% of the UK population. Tends to be higher in areas like Liverpool and Glasgow though due to Irish immigration. The Catholic population has grown considerably with Polish immigration too.

I think many of the parishes around here would have been largely Irish congregations 50 years ago. There's not so many Irish people around (Hackney) as there was. I remember a lot more Irish when I first visited Hackney in the 90's. It's the west African folk that get properly dressed and are most obvious when they're heading to and from church on a Sunday. In terms of BAME Christians, folks with Caribbean heritage tend more to the Protestant, Nigerians and Ghanaians tend more to Catholic. I think Poles and Lithuanians are quite well represented in Catholic congregations, like I said.

In terms of "Anglican London", well, in terms of numbers of people who make the effort to go and worship somewhere every week (or every day, depending how pious) it's far and away "Muslim London". From my casual observations, that's who's out going somewhere to "religiously" worship these days.

Liverpool Roman Catholic Cathedral is an interesting case as that was built as a modern cathedral due to post war austerity, not due to increased immigration.
In fact a lot of Roman Catholic Churches have closed in Liverpool since WW2 due to declining population and changes in church -going.
The Irish had moved in huge numbers to Liverpool after the Irish famine, and what you see now is the second cathedral. The first started to be built, on a different site in 1853 but was never completed due to the other financial needs in a largely poor population, so only the intended Lady Chapel was finished. That was demolished after the current Cathedral was completed.
The current Cathedral was started in 1933, but was to have been a classical design by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It was to have been the second biggest Church in the world (with the largest dome in the world), but only the Crypt was completed in 1956.
The Crypt so large that it is a Cathedral within a Cathedral and is an amazing space in itself. It is well worth the £5 admission charge to go down there.
Then in the early 1960's a scaled down version of the Classical style Cathedral was planned. That too was unaffordable and what we have now was all that could be afforded.
It has had many architectural issues over the years, due to having been built on the cheap.

Liverpool was historically in the County of Lancashire, which had a strong Catholic population even at the time of the 1715 Jacobite Risings.

Oh and in terms of interesting post war Catholic churches, St Brides, East Kilbride, near where I grew up is a favourite of mine. Nicknamed "Fort Apache", it's by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, most well known for St Peter's Seminary, sadly still derelict.

http://www.sbek.org/building/our_building.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Seminary,_Cardross

Golden Girl has the right question of OP.

@Gerry - I'm not familiar with the acronym BAME? Must be a designation for some kind of immigrant group? Could you enlighten me?

It will be interesting to see Alan's reaction when he gets back to this thread. His ultimate decision may be to have resources available on his phone and then check what's available near him when he has free time on his tour. Hopefully he'll have a data plan in UK that will enable him to do this.

It's an interesting discussion. I'm a lapsed Episcopalian but do enjoy visiting churches and attending Evensong when I am in UK.

I'm not familiar with the acronym BAME?

Black, Asian and minority ethnic. Probably a bit obscure to use without explanation. It's quite right-on, and probably a lot of British people (it's British in origin) wouldn't know what it means either

Oh, thank you, Gerry! I suspected it was something that might be common Brit-speak.

Sorry if this takes us off topic a bit but I feel the need to gently correct something said above- Ghana and Nigeria have relatively small Catholic minorities, and people from those countries who are Christian tend to belong to other sects. In general, the countries in Africa that are more Catholic are ones that were colonised by majority Catholic countries, like France (e.g. Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar).

And yes, BAME is quite a common acronym here but probably not anywhere else.

There's pretty sizable Catholic communities in both Nigeria and Ghana. I was probably extrapolating a bit from what I've been told by a 2nd generation Nigerian person I used to work with, who came from a family of Catholic church-goers. She maybe overrepresented the importance of Catholicism in Nigeria to me. Still, Google tells me -

Overall Percentage: Estimates suggest around 10.6% to 12.6% of Nigerians are Catholic, though some sources round it to 15%.

In Ghana -

Catholic: ~10.1% - 14% (depending on source/interpretation).

There's lots of evangelical and Pentecostal churches, big and small, around here too. I'm maybe assuming too much about where people are going to church when I see them in their Sunday best. It's been a while since I went to mass :)

I went to Catholic schools for my entire childhood. It’s not really weird to be a Catholic in England. Every city has Catholic (state, ie free to attend) primary and secondary schools. These days you don’t have to be Catholic to attend.

along that line, my mother and her female cousins happily attended a Catholic Convent (not state) school prior to the last World War. All girls, all taught by Sisters. Neither my mother nor her cousins were Catholic. They got a fabulous education. By the time the war came my mother was fluent in French (of course), German and Russian. Came in very handy when she was posted as translator to Allied HQ.

I went to Catholic state school too. Probably a wee bit different to an English Catholic school experience, because of the background of Protestant - Catholic sectarianism that exists in the west of Scotland. Maybe more so at that time, at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question and sorry that it slightly hijacked the thread.

One of my favourite things about Liverpool catholic cathedral is that it is very affectionately known as Paddy's Wigwam’.

Regarding catholic schools, my dad was a quietly staunch catholic but the one thing he was adamant about was that his children were NOT attending catholic schools. He definitely had something to say about the Christian brothers. Similarly a good friend of mine says the only time she heard her very polite Irish mum swear was when they bumped into one of the nun’s that had taught her. It was muttered under her breath but my friend was left in no doubt about what her mum thought of that holy sister :-)

The term BAME fits the same niche as BIPOC does in the US.

You can basically take all the US discourse around the use or not of BIPOC, search and replace BAME in, and reuse the same hot takes in the UK. (Although not here because that would be the P-word.)

You can basically take all the US discourse around the use or not of BIPOC, search and replace BAME in, and reuse the same hot takes in the UK. (Although not here because that would be the P-word.)

I had to look up BIPOC, but it's only a parallel in so far as it roughly covers a disparate group of people who's life experience isn't that of a white person, in a predominantly white country. I like BAME as much as I could like any acronym that lumps loads of people together like that. It seems pretty inclusive to me. I picked it up working in the arts in London. It serves its purpose alongside acknowledging people's heritage.

I don't know what the P-word is, but I think we just had a hot take. It's off topic and slightly boring, but it was OK to talk about it.

Sorry Alan! Your thread is way off topic. Come back if you want to talk about your original post again.

Hi Alan, Farm Street Church is my Catholic Parish when I’m in London. Beginning Lent with the Jesuits in a historic church is worth considering.

https://www.farmstreet.org.uk/

Claudia also mentioned toward the beginning of this thread.