Welcome

to the website of St John Henry Newman, Victoria, British Columbia. We are a Roman Catholic Quasi-Parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, a body established in 2011 following Pope Benedict XVI’s historic Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, which made it possible for groups of Anglicans to come into the full communion of the Catholic Church whilst retaining elements of their liturgical, spiritual, and cultural patrimony as a gift and a treasure to be shared with the whole Church. Our community is under the patronage of the great theologian and priest St John Henry, Cardinal Newman, a 19th century Anglican convert to the Catholic Church who was canonised in 2019.

We are a friendly, family-oriented, and welcoming community of traditional Catholic faith and practise, as reflected in our liturgy, music, and preaching. We exist to worship God in the triune majesty of the Blessed Trinity, drawing all men and women into deepest communion with him through his Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and in the power and fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Our home is the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Peace, built in 1930 as a memorial to those who died in the First World War. The church lies just west of downtown Victoria, in Esquimalt, and is a parish of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria.

Confessions are heard on Sunday from 1.50-2.25 pm (2.50-3.25 pm on the third Sunday of the month), from 9-9.15 am on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday (also 10.30-11.20 am on Saturday), and 9.30-9.45 am on Friday. Appointments for other times may be made by contacting Fr Kenyon.

This Week

Sunday 24 September
TRINITY XVI
Confessions 1.50-2.25 pm | SOLEMN MASS 2.30 pm

Monday 25 September
Our Lady of Walsingham, Patroness of the Ordinariate
Mattins 8.30 am | Terce 9 am | Confessions 9-9.15 am
Low Mass 9.30 am | Rosary 10.25 am

Tuesday 26 September
Ss Jean de Brébeuf & Isaac Jogues, Priests & Companions, Martyrs
Mattins 8.30 am | Terce 9 am
Confessions 9-9.15 am | Low Mass 9.30 am

Wednesday 27 September
St Vincent de Paul, Priest
Mattins 8.30 am | Terce 9 am | Confessions 9-9.15 am
Low Mass 9.30 am | Rosary 10.25 am

Thursday 28 September
St Wenceslaus, Martyr
Mattins 8.30 am | Terce 9 am
Confessions 9-9.15 am | Low Mass 9.30 am

Friday 29 September
Michaelmas [Abstinence]
Mattins 9 am | Terce 9.30 am
Confessions 9.30-9.45 am | Low Mass 10 am

Saturday 30 September
St Jerome, Priest & Doctor
Mattins 8.30 am | Rosary 9 am | Confessions 9-9.15 am
Low Mass 9.30 am | Exposition 10.30 am
Confessions 10.30-11.20 am | Benediction 11.30 am

Sunday 1 October
TRINITY XVII
Confessions 1.50-2.25 pm | SOLEMN MASS 2.30 pm

The Ordinariate

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in Canada and the United States is one of three ordinariates in the world, the others being the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (Great Britain), and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross (Australia, Japan, and Guam). These bodies, similar to a diocese, are not however based on geography, but rather on membership, and membership is by personal choice, which is why each ordinariate is ‘Personal’. 

Members of the Ordinariate are fully integrated into the life of the Catholic Church. Most were former Anglicans, received into the full communion of the Church, others have become members by virtue of baptism, marriage, or who have family members in the Ordinariate. All are fully Catholic, able to receive the Sacraments in any Catholic church. And similarly any Catholic may attend Mass celebrated according to the Ordinariate Form of the Roman Rite (Divine Worship: The Missal) and receive the Sacraments from an Ordinariate priest. All are welcome! 

Anglicanorum coetibus (Groups of Anglicans), was published in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. This was the favourable response of the Holy See to repeated petitions from Anglicans to be received into full communion in a corporate manner. The erection of personal ordinariates was the practical means to make this response a reality. Since the establishment of the first Ordinariate in England and Wales in 2011 thousands of Anglicans have made the journey home to the fulness of the Catholic Church whilst retaining elements of those Anglican traditions - liturgical, spiritual, and pastoral - which both nourished them and served as an impetus towards full communion. This noble patrimony is now, in the words of Anglicanorum coetibus, ‘a treasure to be shared’ with the whole Church.