A proposed merger between Heythrop College and Roehampton University will not go ahead, it emerged last week.
The Society of Jesus, which runs the college, has withdrawn its support from the negotiations, according to a Heythrop statement.
The statement said: “The Society of Jesus regrets it is unable to support any continuing negotiation with Roehampton University, as it believes it will be impossible to form a partnership which meets the requirements of all stakeholders. In due course it will consider how best to continue its work in the intellectual apostolate.”
The statement also revealed that Heythrop’s chairman of governors, Andrew Kennedy, would be stepping down. Concerns had arisen about the future Catholicity of Heythrop, particularly its Bellarmine Institute, which has pontifical status, as Roehampton is a non-Catholic institution.
Fr Michael Holman, the principal of the college, who has announced his intention to stand down later in the year, will be in post until a new chairman has been elected and the handover to a new principal is finished.
Fr Holman said: “Everyone at Heythrop is very grateful for the outstanding contribution Andrew has made to the life of the college over many years ... Andrew has worked hard to find a way forward for the mission of Heythrop College.”
Jeremy Heap, the current deputy chairman of governors, becomes acting chairman with immediate effect. Heythrop College, founded by the Jesuits in 1614, will cease to exist as a constituent college of the University of London in 2018.
Cardinal praises Catholic vision of St Mary’s University
Cardinal Vincent Nichols has praised St Mary’s University, of which he is chancellor, for preserving its Catholic identity. He told graduates at a degree ceremony last week: “There is nothing narrow or insular in this Catholic vision of education. It is open to all truly human endeavour.”Cardinal Nichols hailed St Mary’s as “a most important point of contact” between British higher education and the Church.
He said: “That engagement, if it is to be fruitful, requires that wonderful combination of openness and faithfulness: openness to the other, to every academic discipline, to the wide range of challenges facing our world, facing every individual today; and faithfulness to who we are and the richness of truth and beauty that the eyes of faith reveal in the soul of every person and in the created world and its unfolding.”
St Mary’s, Britain’s oldest Catholic university, recently strengthened its Catholic identity with the launch of the Benedict XVI Centre, a research hub intended to bring the Catholic tradition into dialogue with today’s political, social and economic questions.
