Know Popery 2008

Last year the parish priest of Lewes started an annual lecture with the striking title 'Know Popery,' to counter the infamous pope-burning celebrations held in the Sussex town on 5 November.

This year Fr Richard Whinder is talking on 'Bishop Richard Challoner: From Lewes to London' - in honour of the great writer and Vicar Apostolic of the London District who was born at Chiddingly, seven miles outside Lewes, on 29 September 1691. He was the only son of Richard Challoner, a wine cooper and ‘a rigid Dissenter’, and his wife Grace Willard. The future bishop was baptised as an Anglican and only fully encountered the Catholic Faith after his father’s death, when Mrs Challoner gained employment in the household of a local recusant landowner, Sir John Gage, at Firle.

The 'Know Popery' lecture takes place tonight (6 November) in St Pancras Church, Irelands Lane, Lewes at 8pm (with Benediction at 7.45).