privacy policy

The Catholic Herald respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect when you read the site, subscribe, sign up for a newsletter or write to us; why we collect it; who we share it with; and the rights you have over it.

The Catholic Herald is published by Catholic Herald Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 00288446, registered office 4th Floor, Aquis House, Blagrave Street, Reading RG1 1PL. We are the data controller for the personal information described here. You can reach us about anything in this policy at subscriptions@thecatholicherald.com, or by post at the registered office, marked for the attention of Data Protection.

Last updated 23 September 2026. This policy applies to thecatholicherald.com, our newsletters, our subscription and account services and the printed magazine.

Depending on how you use The Catholic Herald, we hold some or all of the following.

• Account details: your name, email address and a password (held by our sign-in provider, never in plain text), and whether you signed in with Google.
• Subscription and billing details: the plan you chose, its price and currency, invoices, and the payment method on file. Card numbers are entered directly with our payment processor and never reach our servers; we hold only the card type and last four digits.
• Delivery details: a postal address for the printed magazine or Magnificat.
• Gift details: for a gift subscription, the recipient's name and email address and any message you write, and your own name and email as the giver.
• Newsletter and marketing preferences: which emails you receive and whether you opened or clicked them.
• Messages you send us: letters, support requests, corrections and anything you send through the contact page.
• Reading activity: how many of your free articles you have read this month, and, for subscribers, that you have paid access.
• Technical and usage data: the pages you visit, the device and browser you use, your IP address and approximate location, and how you arrived at the site. Some of this comes from cookies, described below.

Data protection law requires a lawful basis for each use. Ours are:

• To provide what you have asked for (performance of a contract): creating and running your account, taking payment, delivering the magazine, running gift subscriptions, and answering your messages.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the site secure and detecting fraud or abuse, understanding how the site is used so we can improve it, telling existing subscribers about their subscription and about The Catholic Herald, and enforcing our terms. We weigh these interests against your rights and do not use this basis where your interests outweigh ours.
• Your consent: sending newsletters to readers who are not subscribers, and setting analytics and advertising cookies. You can withdraw consent at any time; see Cookies and Your rights below.
• Legal obligations: keeping accounting and tax records, and responding to lawful requests from authorities.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

We use specialist providers to run the site and the paper. Each acts on our instructions under a contract that restricts what it may do with your data.

• Chargebee runs subscriptions and invoicing; Stripe processes card, Apple Pay and Google Pay payments.
• Auth0 (Okta) provides sign-in and holds account credentials.
• Campaign Monitor sends our newsletters and subscriber emails.
• Vercel hosts the website and its images; our content database is hosted with PlanetScale.
• Google provides analytics (Google Analytics 4 and Tag Manager) and embedded YouTube video; Meta receives advertising measurement data (the Meta Pixel and Conversions API) only where you have consented to advertising cookies.
• CookieYes records your cookie choices.
• Our printers and fulfilment partners receive the name and address needed to deliver the magazine or Magnificat.

We may also share information with our professional advisers, with a buyer or successor if the business changes hands, and with courts, regulators or law enforcement where we are required to.

Several of these providers operate in the United States. Where personal data leaves the United Kingdom we rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for providers certified under it, and otherwise on the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, so that your data has protection equivalent to UK law wherever it is processed.

We use three kinds of cookie and local storage:

• Essential: keeping you signed in, remembering your cookie choices, counting your free articles, and securing the checkout. These cannot be switched off because the site does not work without them.
• Analytics: Google Analytics, so we can see which pieces are read and where the site falls short. Set only with your consent.
• Advertising: the Meta Pixel, so we can measure and improve our own advertising for The Catholic Herald. Set only with your consent.

The banner you see on your first visit lets you accept or decline analytics and advertising cookies, and the cookie icon in the corner of every page lets you change your mind at any time. Your browser also lets you block or delete cookies, though blocking essential ones will stop parts of the site working.

• Account and subscription records: for as long as your account is open, and for six years after your last transaction, which is what accounting and tax law require of us.
• Newsletter records: until you unsubscribe, after which we keep only enough to make sure we do not email you again.
• Messages you send us: for up to two years, unless they are part of a subscription record.
• Analytics data: Google Analytics keeps user-level data for fourteen months; aggregated reports are kept indefinitely.
• Backups: our systems are backed up on a rolling basis and copies may persist for a short period after deletion.

Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct anything that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete it, where we no longer need it;
• restrict how we use it, or object to a particular use, including any direct marketing;
• give you a copy in a portable format to take elsewhere;
• stop relying on your consent, where that is the basis we use.

To do any of these, email subscriptions@thecatholicherald.com. We may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will answer within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. Readers in the European Economic Area and the United States have equivalent rights under their own laws and can exercise them the same way.

The Catholic Herald is written for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under sixteen. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

We protect your information with encryption in transit, restricted access to our systems, and providers who meet recognised security standards. No system is perfectly secure; if we ever discover a breach affecting your data we will tell you and the regulator as the law requires.

Our articles and emails link to other websites, and some pages embed video from YouTube. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for them.

We will update this page when our practices change and change the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information we will tell you by email or with a notice on the site before it takes effect.