Priest named head of Australian ordinariate one hour before ordination

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- One hour before the Mass at which he was to be ordained as a Catholic priest, Father Harry Entwistle, 72, was named by Pope Benedict XVI as the first head of the personal ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, a jurisdiction for former Anglicans in Australia.

Father Entwistle, who was ordained an Anglican priest in England in 1964, immigrated to Australia in 1988, joined the Traditional Anglican Communion in 2006 and was later named Australia's Western regional bishop. The Traditional Anglican Communion is a worldwide group of Anglicans that separated themselves from the Anglican Communion led by the archbishop of Canterbury.

The Vatican announced his appointment as head of the ordinariate June 15, just one hour before his ordination Mass was set to begin in St. Mary's Cathedral, Perth. Father Entwistle is married and has two grown children.

Also June 15, as had been announced previously, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith formally erected the personal ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.

Earlier in the evening, around 40 former Perth Anglicans entered into full communion with the Catholic Church.

In his homily at Father Entwistle's ordination, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe praised the priest for his courage, both in embracing Catholicism and in accepting his new role as ordinary.

"The rich Anglican tradition has formed and nourished you all and has been the home in which you have discovered the beauty and the call of God," the archbishop said.

"The gifts you bring ... will now be strengthened and deepened through this new outpouring of the Holy Spirit," he said.

In 2009, Pope Benedict issued the apostolic constitution "Anglicanorum coetibus," providing for the establishment of ordinariates for former Anglicans who join the Catholic Church while retaining some of their Anglican traditions, spirituality and prayer. The first ordinariate, Our Lady of Walsingham, was established in 2011. The personal ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, for former Anglicans in the United States, was erected in January.