Fr Kenyon Leaving St John The Evangelist Calgary

My regular correspondent passed on the news that Fr Kenyon announced yesterday that effective August 1, he is leaving St John the Evangelist, Calgary to take up a diocesan parish in England, near his extended family. He will be trying to gather an OOLW group in addition to his parish responsibilities.

This is surprising news, given that as founding pastor of a full parish, he may have been expected to keep that post for an extended period. In addition, he has been vicar forane for the Canadian deanery in the OCSP. Bp Lopes will presumably have some difficulty coming up with a replacement, and there doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate. Remaining OCSP priests in Canada are in their sixties and seventies.

My correspondent continues,

Fr Kenyon's story is that after eight amazing etc years in Canada he is "being appointed to a parish in the Diocese of Shrewsbury from 1 August, with a particular care for the development of an Ordinariate apostolate in South Manchester, my home town. [He] will remain incardinated as a priest of our Ordinariate, on loan, as it were, for an initial five year period. The parish...will be only a 15 minute car journey from my parents' home, and three of my siblings live within a 3 mile radius of the new parish. This has been a major factor in our decision to return to England." It has surface plausibility.

Not sure how well things are going financially at St John's. They have a mortgage of close to a million dollars, and the offering figures published in the weekly bulletins suggest to me that they are falling behind.

Well, that's the info we have, at any rate.