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The second of two English brothers has been ordained to the priesthood for the Institute of Christ the King at the Institute’s seminary in Gricigliano, Italy.
Canon Joseph McCowen was ordained to the sacred priesthood by His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke, along with five other men, on July 3. His brother, Canon Michael McCowen, had also been ordained at Gricigliano by Cardinal Burke just two years earlier. Both brothers entered seminary at the age of 18.
The brothers are well known to the Catholic community at Ss Peter & Paul and St Philomena in New Brighton—popularly known as “The Dome of Home”—and at St Walburge’s in Preston.
Both churches are architecturally significant. St Walburge’s has the tallest spire of any parish church in England, while Ss Peter & Paul and St Philomena is a Grade II listed building.
However, by 2007 both churches faced uncertain futures: Ss Peter & Paul and St Philomena closed in 2008, and St Walburge’s seemed likely to follow. Remarkably, both churches were given a new lease of life when the Canons of the Institute of Christ the King arrived and offered to care for the buildings.
The Institute of Christ the King is a Society of Apostolic Life of pontifical right, founded in 1990 by Mgr Gilles Wach and Fr Philippe Mora in Gabon. The Institute is fully in communion with the Holy See and was approved by the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei in 2008.
The Institute celebrates the traditional Roman Rite according to the 1962 liturgical books—including the Mass, Breviary, Ritual, and Pontifical—with a particular emphasis on solemnity, reverence, and liturgical beauty.
It has over one hundred seminarians, all of whom study at the St Philip Neri International Seminary in Gricigliano. The Institute also operates several pre-seminary formation houses across the United States to help prepare US-based candidates before they arrive in Italy. Around 130 men serve as priests, supported by oblates who assist in their apostolic work.
The Institute also has a female branch, the Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest—a non-cloistered contemplative community with convents in Switzerland, Germany, England, Ireland, France, and the United States. A lay branch, the Society of the Sacred Heart, allows lay members to live within the charism of the Institute according to a modified Benedictine rule adapted to their vocation.
In England, the Institute currently has four communities and a convent, and it also serves the spiritual needs of the enclosed Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate in Cornwall. It has recently founded the Saint Benedict’s Cultural Centre to support families seeking to provide their children with an authentic Catholic education.
