The Most Reverend Michael Bowen
Catholic archbishop who encouraged use of the Tridentine Mass and stood up to the National Front
THE MOST REVEREND MICHAEL BOWEN, who has died aged 89, was the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Southwark from 1977 to 2003 and served as a bishop for more than 33 years. A hallmark of Bowen’s episcopate was the encouragement he gave to Catholics who still favoured the Tridentine Mass long before Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 broadened access to the old rite.
Southwark ministered to a number of mixed-race communities and Bowen established several chaplaincies for ethnic minorities. In August 1977, shortly after he took office, he wrote a joint letter with the Anglican Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, to the Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, asking him to stop a march by the National Front and a counter-demonstration planned for the same day. The bishops warned of violence and a serious breakdown in public order.
Rees refused and the marches went ahead, with resulting injuries to police and demonstrators in Lewisham. The following day, Bowen said mass in Lewisham’s Catholic church, telling the large congregation: “We must see the face of Christ in our brother, no matter what his race, colour or religion.”
In spite of his bland appearance, Bowen could be robust in defence of “justice and peace”. In 1981, in the light of a papal encyclical on social questions, he wrote an open letter to the people of his diocese reproaching Catholics for their lack of social awareness.
The Southwark archdiocese faced controversy early in 1986 after a parish priest launched a campaign to turn Surbiton into England’s answer to Lourdes. Bowen permitted the priest at Kingston upon Thames to circulate a booklet among the faithful describing claimed mystical visions of the Virgin Mary by a local woman, Patricia de Menezes. The booklet appealed for money to build a vast basilica in Surbiton which Menezes said she had been commanded to build in one of her visions.
Bowen firmly requested the priest not to become involved, but some Catholics criticised Church authorities for failing to act more decisively to nip the venture in the bud. By 2002 Bowen had officially declared that Menezes’s “visions” were not of supernatural origin, but not before Surbiton had become a place of pilgrimage without official sanction.
Bowen was made vice-president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 1996, and president in 1999 after Cardinal Basil Hume’s death. He was elected to hold the office for a year, rather than the usual five, on the understanding that the position would revert to the next Archbishop of Westminster.
In his new role, Bowen immediately launched a blistering attack on the Israeli government, whom he accused of plotting to widen divisions between Christian and Muslim Arabs; Israel had allowed a mosque to be built close to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.
Michael George Bowen was born in Gibraltar on April 23 1930, the son of Major CLJ Bowen and Maisie (née Pedley). The Bowens were originally
Northern Irish members of the Church of Ireland. Michael’s great-grandfather was the Archbishop of Armagh and Protestant Primate of Ireland, William Alexander, whose wife was CF Alexander, the Victorian author of well-known hymns such as All Things Bright and Beautiful. Their daughter married into the Bowen family.
Catholicism was introduced by Michael’s mother’s family, the Saccones, from Spain. They owned Saccone & Speed, a firm of wine merchants in Gibraltar which supplied the British Army, dealing mainly in sherry and port. Major Bowen met his wife while stationed in Gibraltar.
Major Bowen was killed fighting the Germans in the Narvik campaign in Norway in 1940. In 1945 his widow married the baronet Sir Paul Makins. Michael, who had one brother, spent his early years between Gibraltar and Wimbledon, where he had his early education at Ladycroft School. He went on to Downside, entering the same month in 1943 as Maurice Couve de Murville, whom he later co-consecrated as Archbishop of Birmingham. He was also head boy.
From 1948 to 1949 Bowen was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Irish Guards, the regiment in which his father had served. In 1949 he began studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, but left in 1950 without graduating to spend a couple of years in the family wine trade in Gibraltar, intending to make it his career.
Then in 1952, having felt the call to the priesthood, he began studies at the English College in Rome, and was ordained in 1958. He took degrees in Philosophy and Theology at the Gregorian University there.
In 1959 he returned to England as a priest of Southwark, serving as a curate successively in Earlsfield and Walworth, between 1959 and 1963. He then returned to Rome as Theology tutor at the Beda College for mature English seminarians.
This was at the height of the Second Vatican Council, and Bowen would attend lectures in Rome to find out what changes were afoot, and then return to the Beda to pass the latest information on to his students. In 1966 he was recalled to Southwark as Chancellor of the diocese.
In June 1970 he became Coadjutor Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, to aid the ailing Bishop David Cashman, and he succeeded him as Bishop after his death the following year. The diocese had been carved out of Southwark in 1965, so Bowen was only its second bishop. At 40 he was also the youngest English diocesan bishop.
Bowen attended the Synod of bishops in Rome in 1971, at which he represented the English and Welsh hierarchy with the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal John Heenan. He admitted afterwards that the discussions on clerical celibacy had convinced him that the Church should allow married priests in Latin America, where there was a profound shortage of vocations.
Bowen inherited as his residence a large country house in Storrington, West Sussex, with eight bedrooms and set in 14 acres of grounds. It had been the junior seminary for the White Canons – the Norbertines – who had a priory nearby, and had been purchased by Bishop Cashman.
In 1972 Bowen voiced a desire to sell it and find somewhere smaller in the centre of the diocese. But nothing came of the plan and it was not sold until more than 30 years, and two bishops, later.
Another matter Bowen had to tackle was the deteriorating structure of his cathedral at Arundel, built a century before at the expense of the 15th Duke of Norfolk to serve the town’s small Catholic population. Its promotion to cathedral status in 1965 raised its profile, and a survey revealed the need to spend £250,000 on the fabric. Bowen launched an appeal in September 1974.
The following month, IRA bombers killed five people in two Guildford pubs. The city was in the heart of Bowen’s diocese and the bishop voiced strong condemnation in a letter read out in all Catholic churches in Surrey and Sussex.
In 1977 Bowen was installed as Archbishop of Southwark on his 47th birthday, following the death of Cyril Cowderoy. His was the third-youngest appointment as archbishop of an English diocese since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850.
Southwark had become an archdiocese in 1965 and Bowen was only its third incumbent since 1904. His two immediate predecessors were the larger-than-life figures, Peter
‘We must see the face of Christ in our brother, no matter what his race, colour or religion’
One of his parish priests campaigned to turn Surbiton into England’s answer to Lourdes
Amigo and Cowderoy, but Bowen had a much lower profile. Some believed the archdiocese needed an outsider who would radically overhaul it, and that Bowen, essentially a Southwark man already, was not best-placed to do this.
Nevertheless, he arrived with his mind already set on changes to its shape and structure. After consulting with priests and laity, he decided to divide the existing archdiocese into three pastoral areas, appointing a bishop for each. He also created 16 new parishes and encouraged the ordination of married deacons.
Unlike his predecessor, who knew his parish priests much better than his curates, Bowen made a point of knowing all his clergy. One young priest, impressed by Bowen’s reputation as a oenologist, praised the bouquet of the wine served at dinner. “Oh good,” replied the archbishop. “It is a dandelion wine given to me by some Salesian nuns in Bermondsey.”
In 2002 the Vatican rejected a further move by Bowen to split the Southwark diocese by creating a new diocese for Kent. The following year, after more than 26 years as archbishop, Bowen decided to step down and asked the Vatican to look for a replacement, citing tiredness and the desire to hand over to a younger man.
In retirement, Bowen discovered the joys of dusting. He had always been a keen golfer, but modesty prevented him from correcting somebody who did not catch his name and kept calling him “Archie” throughout the round they played.
Bowen became a Freeman of the City of London in 1984.
Michael Bowen, born April 23 1930, died October 17 2019