Shortly after his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 2000, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor attended a meeting of the Westminster Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee. After thanking the members for their work, he said that the main reason for coming was to propose changes to the high altar. Several times, he recalled, he had asked Cardinal Hume why he had left the Cathedral only temporarily re-planned in conformity to the regulations laid down by the Second Vatican Council.
“I am leaving that to my successor,” explained the cardinal. “I am he,” declared the new archbishop, with a smile.
He proposed that the temporary altar erected for the pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II to England in 1982 should be removed and the great monolith of Cornish granite, given by the Hon George Savile, which forms the original high altar should be moved forward to the centre of the ciborium magnum, or baldacchino, to enable Mass to be celebrated versus populum and ad orientem. As a member of the committee, I welcomed this proposal because it meant returning to Bentley’s high altar and drawing the Cathedral into the liturgical unity it had formerly enjoyed. It also meant that once more Mass would be celebrated beneath a ciborium and that the sanctuary would have one altar. It was also enlightened in so far as it excluded destruction, built upon what was already there, rather than introduce innovations, and enabled Mass to be celebrated in both positions.
