An Advent Pastoral Letter

On 175th Anniversary of Shrewsbury Diocese

To be read at all Masses on the First Sunday of Advent, 30th November 2025

My dear brothers and sisters,

I write as this Jubilee Year draws to its close and our Shrewsbury Diocese celebrates 175 years since its founding. The Jubilee of 2025 has been dedicated to hope. Christian hope is never a vague expectation that things might work out, rather it is knowing on what, or rather on who we can truly depend.

Advent renews this hope each year inviting every generation “to wake from sleep” because in Saint Paul’s words, “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed”. The Gospel declares this hope fulfilled in Christ’s coming: the Eternal Son of God born at Bethlehem, coming now to us in grace, supremely in His Eucharist, the very source of grace, and at last in great power and glory “at an hour (we) do not expect”.

In this same hope a 39-year-old Bishop James Brown, and the founding generation of the Diocese dared to look forwards. In a threatening atmosphere of anti-Catholic feeling, our first bishop had to be hurriedly consecrated. His new mission was already sufficiently daunting in serving a vast territory, then including North Wales, with only 26 diocesan priests. The faithful barely numbered 20,000 and suffered from what Bishop Brown described as “a want of means”.

By any human calculation the prospects of this new Diocese were poor indeed. Yet, within a generation, Bishop Brown was able to record the Mass was within everyone’s reach and there was barely a new mission that did not have a school to help parents pass on the Catholic faith to their children. The celebration of this 175th anniversary, invites us to give thanks for all who were part of a heroic story.

The hope in which this Diocese was born, was well expressed by Saint John Henry Newman as being the “Second Spring” of the Catholic Church in our land. Newman specifically referred to this Diocese, prophesying that Shrewsbury, “If the world lasts, shall be name as musical to the ear, as stirring to the heart as the glories we have lost; and Saints shall arise.”

Insofar as we keep our gaze fixed on the same Jesus, who comes even now in His Eucharist and is here in our midst, we will continue to build the life and witness of Shrewsbury Diocese for all generations to come.

United with you in this hope of Advent,

+ Mark, Bishop of Shrewsbury