William Oddie, who died last week aged 80, may not have been the longest-serving editor of the Catholic Herald, but he was one of the most influential. During his five-year tenure, he charted a new course for this publication, which it has followed ever since.
Dr Oddie was appointed in 1998, when the Herald was a struggling broadsheet newspaper. The announcement provoked anxiety in the Catholic world. Why? Because he was a formidable polemicist and former Anglican vicar who converted to Catholicism in 1991 amid a ferocious battle over women priests. One writer characterised him as “a traditionalist who will ensure editorials are firmly to the right”. That description irked him. “Can we please abandon the inappropriate language of left and right when writing of Church affairs?” he wrote in a letter published in the week of his appointment. His editorial policy, he said, would simply be to “support and defend” the vision of John Paul II.
