Francis Young, Author at Catholic Herald

Francis Young

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Catholics join ecumenical celebration of the Millennium of Bury St Edmunds Abbey

May 19, 2022

The weekend of 14th and 15th May witnessed a historic return of Benedictine monks to the site of the Abbey of St Edmund, Bury St Edmunds, whose millennium is being celebrated by the town in 2022. Monks of the English Benedictine Congregation from Douai Abbey and Ampleforth Abbey were joined by the Bishop of East

Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall

December 01, 2020

It looks increasingly as though Vindolanda was the centre of intense Christian activity in the 5th century.

A glimpse of St Thomas Becket’s elusive intellectual world

September 23, 2020

The Book in the Cathedral By Christopher de Hamel Penguin, £9.99 The year 2020 marks the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, but all events planned for the year – including the loan of the martyr’s bloodstained shirt by the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore to Canterbury Cathedral –

Eating goose and avoiding the woods: September’s ancient customs

September 04, 2020

Until it ceased to be a communal event with the advent of mechanised agriculture in the 20th century, harvest was central to the month of September. Harvesters demanded “largesse”, a customary payment that could be exacted from the farmer or anyone else who stepped onto land being harvested. Colourful customs attended the harvesting of the

Until the 19th century, July was a month of local fairs

July 10, 2020

July’s weather made it a popular time for fairs until the late 19th century, when the home secretary suppressed most traditional local fairs on the grounds of disorder, drunkenness and immorality. But fairs had suffered a setback in the previous century: after the imposition of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, their fixed days no longer

The last lockdown: 13th-century England’s six years without Mass

April 09, 2020

Easter 2020 will be the first Easter in the history of the Church when Catholics in most parts of the world will not be able to attend Mass. The situation is unprecedented. It is not, however, entirely unprecedented in England. Even during the dark days of Elizabethan persecution, there was always somewhere the faithful could

How plague shaped a great historian

March 26, 2020

One of the most remarkable survivals in St Paul’s Church in Jarrow – itself a remarkable survivor of Anglo-Saxon architecture – is a dedication stone inscribed on April 23 685, which was laid by the first Abbot of Jarrow, Ceolfrith. Among the monks who witnessed the consecration of the new monastery that day was a

St Eanswythe helps dispel the anti-Catholic myth of relic fraud

March 12, 2020

Before this week even people with an active interest in Anglo-Saxon Christianity may never have heard of St Eanswythe, the patron saint of Folkestone. But since last Friday, this hitherto obscure 7th-century abbess holds a special place in English Catholicism: her relics are, we can now say with confidence, the earliest known remains of an English saint.