British Catholics welcome cardinal appointment for Dominican who is UK’s best known preacher

OXFORD, England (OSV News) — British Catholics have welcomed the appointment of Father Timothy Radcliffe, their country’s best known Dominican preacher, as a cardinal, predicting it will raise their church’s profile at home and abroad.

“He’s a deeply prayerful, intelligent person, who understands the problems people wrestle with,” said Msgr. Roderick Strange, rector of London’s Mater Ecclesiae College and a longtime friend.

“With the pope calling for a church which includes rather than excludes, he’s also helping lead the synodal process, as a way of listening and learning from others.”

The priest was reacting to the pope’s Oct. 6 announcement that Oxford-based Father Radcliffe, currently spiritual adviser to the Rome synod, will be one of 21 new cardinals he will create Dec. 7.

In an Oct. 9 interview with OSV News, Cardinal-designate Radcliffe said his appointment was a “complete surprise,” with the news coming in an email from his Dominican prior.

He added that he was “still not very clear” what being a cardinal would mean for his “life and ministry,” but said he hoped it would provide an opportunity “to offer all possible support to the Holy Father” through preaching, while continuing to “share in the life” of his Oxford community.

Meanwhile, an English theologian at the synod told OSV News it was fitting the appointment had come close to the Oct. 9 feast day of St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), another great Oxford Catholic, and had been communicated to Father Radcliffe “through the celebration of others.”

“The news has delighted not only British participants, but the whole international community of synod members, who’ve come to see him as a spiritual father,” said Anna Rowlands, professor who chairs the U.K.’s Center for Catholic Social Thought and Practice.

“It’s a sign of hope that the humane, energetic, hope-filled presence that he represents for so many has been recognized as valued and needed amongst the cardinalate,” she said.

Born Aug. 22, 1945, in London, Cardinal-designate Radcliffe joined the Dominican order, also known as the Order of Preachers, in 1965 while studying at Oxford University’s St. John’s College and was ordained in 1971.

While teaching Scripture at the Dominicans’ Blackfriars Hall, he was elected English provincial in 1988, and the first English global master of the Dominicans in 1992.

He held the post till 2001, also serving ex officio as chancellor of Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, and setting up the Dominican Volunteers International organization and Dominican-Franciscan representation at the United Nations.

The vice president of the English and Welsh bishops’ conference, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool, a fellow Dominican, told OSV News he was delighted at Cardinal-designate Radcliffe’s “well-deserved honor,” adding that he had been “tirelessly devoted to ministry” while making “significant and valuable contributions to the Catholic Church.”

However, a leading historian said the appointment was also a “historic development” for Cardinal-designate Radcliffe’s adopted home city of Oxford, where Catholics faced persecution after the Reformation and were excluded from the university until 1896.

“It will certainly raise the profile of Catholics here — perhaps also reaffirming the university’s traditional Catholic leanings,” Susan Doran, professor and senior research fellow at Jesus College, told OSV News. “It will also bring Rome closer, creating opportunities and showing there are scholars here esteemed at the church’s highest level.”

Cardinal-designate Radcliffe headed Blackfriars Hall’s Las Casas Institute, promoting social justice and human rights, in 2014-2016, and was named a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in 2015.

He was one of the first priests in Britain to provide pastoral care for AIDS sufferers, while sitting on the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament.

The cardinal-designate holds honorary doctorates from 13 universities, including a coveted Oxford divinity doctorate, while his books, translated into 24 languages, include the bestselling “Why Go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist” (2008) and “What Is the Point of Being a Christian?” which won the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing.

In a commentary, the former editor of Britain’s The Tablet Catholic weekly, Catherine Pepinster, described Cardinal-designate Radcliffe as “quietly spoken but charismatic,” adding that he combined “a talent for mixing with ordinary people” with “an ability not to be cowed by those in authority.”

While Cardinal-designate Radcliffe had always shown loyalty to official church doctrine on social and moral issues, including male-female marriage, Pepinster said, his “nuanced writings” and openness to LGBTQ+ groups had been “especially appealing to more liberal Catholics.”

However, Msgr. Strange said he believed the cardinal-designate’s teaching surpassed “liberal-conservative distinctions.”

He added that Cardinal-designate Radcliffe had traveled constantly while master of the Dominicans, often in “very hazardous circumstances,” and was deeply versed in “addressing issues openly” and “listening to those he might not agree with.”

Meanwhile, another Oxford academic told OSV News the Dominican order under Cardinal-designate Radcliffe’s guidance had undergone a revival by avoiding domination by a “narrow liberal orthodoxy” and “maintaining its strong intellectual traditions.”

“Father Timothy has devoted his long career to serious theology in service to the church, and it’s refreshing he’s been honored this way,” said Joseph Shaw, chairman of Britain’s traditionalist Latin Mass Society.

“Given its limited size, England’s church has been viewed as something of an intellectual backwater. This is now changing, as Catholic thinkers make new waves and put our institutions on the map.”

Cardinal-designate Radcliffe led a three-day preparatory retreat for synod participants in October 2023, and was asked by the pope to lead spiritual preparations for the current Oct. 2-27 second session.

His appointment gives the once-marginalized Catholic church in England an unprecedented four serving cardinals, and makes Cardinal-designate Radcliffe, whose speech ability was temporarily disrupted by jaw cancer in 2021, the fourth English Dominican to serve as a cardinal, and the first since the early 14th Century.

In her OSV News interview, professor Rowlands said many Catholics had personally experienced Cardinal-designate Radcliffe’s “gift for proclamation and deep care”, which embodied “a face of the church so many need to see, hear and know.”

“Timothy is that rare Christian who can reach a secular and ecumenical audience with a message that draws them to the church, as if they’ve heard the Gospel message anew, addressed to them in a personal way,” the Durham-based theologian said.

“He’s a pastor capable of profound accompaniment in the depths of pain and suffering, a person committed to action on the most difficult social and political issues, and someone with an extraordinary capacity for friendship.”

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