The former Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe has been appointed leader of a Christian group campaigning to leave the EU. Miss Widdecombe is the first president of Christians for Britain, founded by Adrian Hilton, who runs the Archbishop Cranmer blog, and the Anglican minister Giles Fraser. Miss Widdecombe, a columnist for the Catholic Herald, said: “It is no good thinking we can come out at a later stage. There will not be that opportunity. It is a now or never situation.”
Miss Widdecombe was once described in a newspaper profile as “a fairly restrained Eurosceptic”. In her 2013 autobiography, Strictly Ann, Widdecombe described the EU as “an extravagant, regulation-bound, interventionist Leviathan of a would-be superstate, the ultimate goal of which [is] federalism”.
She wrote that Britain needed to have a plan for leaving the EU: “I am not prepared merely to run away; I need to know where I am going next.”
Miss Widdecombe, who converted to Catholicism in 1993, held several ministerial positions in John Major’s Torygovernment, and later served as shadow health secretary and shadow home secretary.
On its website, Christians for Britain states: “The EU’s bureaucratic, corporatist mindset is antithetical to the UK’s democratic traditions and historic Christian values.” A group representing the opposite view, Christians for the European Union, has also been founded.
Scottish Church ‘not doing enough for abuse survivors’
The Catholic Church in Scotland urgently needs to reach out to child abuse survivors, according to the author of a major report on safeguarding. Dr Andrew McLellan, a minister in the Church of Scotland, said the bishops’ website page on safeguarding had not been updated since 2013. “This hardly shows energy, let alone urgency,” he said.
Dr McLellan, formerly chief inspector of prisons for Scotland, was chairman of the McLellan Commission, which the Scottish bishops asked to review safeguarding. The commission’s report, published in 2013, recommended that the Church provide support for abuse survivors.
Dr McLellan said he was encouraged by the bishops’ conference issuing a public apology but, speaking to the Tablet, said he was “despondent” and “angry” that the Church had not done more to reach out to survivors. A spokesman for the bishops’ conference said: “The bishops have agreed a theology of safeguarding, work is underway on establishing the mechanism for survivor involvement and the conference (is in the process of creating) an independent body.”
Lourdes leader honoured
A Catholic lay man from Epsom has been awarded the Knights of St Gregory papal medal in recognition of his work for the disabled. John Flood led a pilgrimage group to Lourdes more than 50 years and helped to raise £500,000 for the Children’s Pilgrimage Trust.
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