Last week, the founder of St Anselm’s Institute in Margate, a Catholic institute that trains foreign priests and religious in evangelisation and leadership, said that the Home Office’s handling of visa applications had amounted to “mental torture” in recent years.
Fr Kofler explained that a Catholic priest was recently refused a visa by the Home Office to study at the institute because he wasn’t married. A nun was also denied entry to Britain because (as a consequence of belonging to a religious order) she did not have a personal bank account. These are regulations which simply don’t work for priests and religious.
