King Henry VIII and his iconoclast-in-chief, Thomas Cromwell, would be stunned: Nearly 500 years after the English Reformation, Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of the Protestant Church of England, will be given over to a Roman Catholic Mass, celebrated by the pope’s own representative in the country in honor of the martyr Thomas Becket, who died in the cathedral in 1170.
Not least among the historical oddities of the day will be that the Mass will award those in attendance a plenary indulgence.
When Henry broke with Rome in 1535 to create the Church of England, it led to the destruction of shrines to saints and martyrs, including their relics. The tradition of offering pilgrims an indulgence for visiting these shrines — a key driver of the Protestant revolt across Europe at the time — was ended.
But on Monday (July 7), Canterbury Cathedral will reverse that history when a Mass is celebrated by Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia, apostolic nuncio to the United Kingdom, to mark one of the feasts of Becket, the former Archbishop of Canterbury murdered by knights acting for another English king, Henry II. After a repentant Henry II paid a public penance the following year, Becket was made a saint in 1173, and Canterbury quickly become a place of pilgrimage.
The feast, known as the translation of St. Thomas Becket, commemorates the moving of Becket’s relics from the cathedral crypt to the shrine behind the main altar, where they stayed until 1538 when, on the orders of Henry VIII who particularly wanted the cult of Becket suppressed, the crypt was destroyed.
Roman Catholic Masses have been held at the Anglican cathedral since, but this is the first time a papal nuncio will have celebrated Mass there. And while the only relics left at the cathedral are some bloodstains of Becket’s, the Roman Catholic parish of St. Thomas, also in Canterbury, has acquired a relic — a bone of Becket’s, which will be taken to the cathedral for the Mass…
…The July 7 event at Canterbury is evidence of a growing interest in shrines, saints and relics in the Church of England, often with the help of the Roman Catholic Church, which held on to relics rescued from the iconoclasts of the Reformation by recusant families and priests.
Among the Anglican cathedrals that now have relics restored to them is Hereford, which had its shrine to St. Thomas of Cantilupe, a medieval bishop of Hereford, restored in 2008 and now houses relics of the saint, loaned to Hereford by the Roman Catholic Jesuit order. Lichfield Cathedral and St. Albans Cathedral have also acquired relics.
