Edwin Barnes

Edwin Ronald Barnes (6 February 1935 – 6 February 2019) was a British

Barnes was educated at Plymouth College and Pembroke College, Oxford.

He was made a deacon on

In 1995, he was chosen to be the first Bishop of Richborough, a provincial episcopal visitor in the Province of Canterbury for traditionalists who reject the ordination of women as priests. He consecrated a bishop at Westminster Abbey on 20 July 1995.^[6] He retired in 2001.^[7][8]

Reception into the Catholic Church

In October 2010, Barnes was interviewed by The Tablet magazine on the possibility of joining the proposed personal ordinariate in the Roman Catholic Church for former Anglicans (which was established as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in January 2011). He said that he wanted to join "because the Anglican Church is no longer the one holy and apostolic Church it says it is."^[9] On 6 January 2011, Barnes announced that he intended being received into the Catholic Church.^[10]

On 21 January 2011 he and his wife, Jane, were received into the Catholic Church at the Church of Our Lady & St Joseph, Lymington by Monsignor Peter Ryan, himself a former Anglican.^[11] He was ordained to the diaconate on 11 February 2011 in the domestic chapel at Bishop's House, Portsmouth by Crispian Hollis, Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth. He was ordained to the priesthood on 5 March 2011 by the same bishop in the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth, for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. In June 2012 he was elevated to the rank of monsignor as a Chaplain of His Holiness.

Illness and Death

Barnes died on 6 February 2019 on his 84th birthday, following a short illness.^[12]

References