‘A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR MANY NATIONS’ Mark 11:17
For over 50 years this site has been a centre of prayer and service to the community.
1962-1965 The Second Vatican Council modernised the Catholic Church. This included allowing church services to be celebrated in local languages instead of Latin, making it possible for church goers to be more involved.
1969 Westminster Diocese created a Centre for Pastoral Liturgy led by Father (later Canon) Harold Winstone. Its role was to produce a modern English liturgy, including translating and adapting existing Latin texts. Father Winstone wanted to base his activities in a parish, to ensure his proposals worked.
Also in 1969, the Diocese invited a group of Ursuline Sisters from Malta to run its international students’ hostel on Portland Rise.
1973 The parish of St Thomas More was created, mass first being celebrated in a room above a pub.
1975 The church of St Thomas More opened with its the Liturgy Centre. The church is designed for ease of participation in the mass and for liturgical experimentation. The Liturgy Centre led liturgical renewal, producing new texts and music – a group of church music composers was also based here – for church services. A team led by Father Winstone translated the text of the mass from Latin to English.
1980s the hostel closed, the area around the church developed into affordable housing and the nuns opened a nursery on Adolphus Road (Ursula Mews marks their presence in the area). The Liturgy Centre, now led by Father Michael Shaw, left for larger premises and was replaced for a few years by Pax Christi.
Today the church remains the focal point of a diverse community, its interior enhanced by Russian-inspired icons and a powerful contemporary crucifix from a North London chapel where generations of priests trained for service in Africa.
The parish continues to serve the wider community through collaboration with local Citizens networks and international development organizations such as CAFOD. The offices of the Catholic Association for Racial Justice and the Irish Elderly Network are to be found at the side of the building.
Commemorative windows
Early in 2022, a beautiful series of stained glass windows were unveiled at St Thomas More Church.
“The original window frame was donated in thanksgiving for his life by Moses Soyode, a parishioner who lost an eye when a bomb exploded on a bus in central London on 7th July 2005,” said Parish Priest Fr Clive Lee. “The stained glass windows, over the glass frame, commemorate those who died of Covid-19. They were given in thanks for all those working in the NHS during the pandemic in 2019-21.”
The four doves descending in the top window, represent the message of peace, joy, hope and justice, contained in the four Gospels. One of the doves has an olive branch in its beak, a sign of peace and reaching safety from the story of Noah and the Ark in Genesis 8.11. The ascending dove represents the Holy Spirit within each of us, as our souls respond to the Gospel. As it soars upwards there is a hint of a rainbow symbolising the covenant established between God and humanity, again from Genesis 9.13.
The window was designed by artist Jamie Clark. The purple glass was manufactured in Birmingham, in the last remaining stained glass factory in the country whilst the rest of the glass was manufactured in Germany.