Augustinian friars return to Walsingham at Catholic National Shrine for first time since Reformation

Three African friars are coming to the Catholic National Shrine and Basilica of Our Lady at Walsingham, where they will assist and serve the increasing numbers of pilgrimage coming to what was once one of Europe’s most prominent pilgrimage sites.

The development was announced on 9 September and has been described as a “a significant moment in the life and history” of the Shrine. The move represents the first time that members of the religious order that formerly worshipped and served pilgrims at Walsingham have returned, on a permanent basis, since they were forcibly disbanded by Protestant authorities nearly five hundred years ago during the Reformation.

“After much hard work behind the scenes and the support of the local Bishop, I am delighted that the Nigerian Province of the Augustinian Order has responded so generously to my request and that three young Friars will soon be among us for service at the Shrine in Walsingham,” said Rev Dr Robert Billing, the Shrine’s director.

“Their arrival, the establishment of a new Priory in service of the Shrine, and their ministry here not only promises so much for the future mission of the Shrine but also pays rich tribute for the Augustinian tradition of Canons that faithfully served the Shrine from the 12th century.”

The medieval Augustinian priory at Walsingham in Norfolk was once one of the most visited pilgrimage destinations in Europe.

“The famous Priory [often known today as “The Abbey”], and famed Marian Shrine, which housed the original replica Holy House of Nazareth, was administered by Augustinian Canons from 1153 all the way up to the medieval Shrine’s dismantling and the Priory’s subsequent destruction in 1538, at the hands of Henry VIII’s commissioners,” the Shrine’s administrators note.

The priory buildings were destroyed following the “dissolution”, vandalisation and robbing of the monasteries and Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534.

Today, all that remains is a singular arch on its eastern side, though it remains a popular destination of pilgrimage, having seen a resurgence after Catholic Emancipation in the 19th century.

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The Slipper Chapel in the nearby village of Houghton St Giles, where medieval pilgrims would remove their footwear following Mass or prayers before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, and then walk the final “holy mile” to the abbey grounds barefoot – is now the site of the Catholic National Shrine.

This medieval Slipper Chapel, made of the local Norfolk cobbled stone, came into Catholic hands thanks to Miss Charlotte Pearson Boyd, a local convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, who bought the chapel from a farmer before restoring it and donating it to the Church.

Pope Leo XIII – who strongly encouraged and patronised the devotion to Our Lady at Walsingham – authorised the chapel as an official shrine in 1897. He famously prophesied:

“When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England.”

The Shrine was awarded further papal approval and dignities after Bl Pope Pius XII sent his papal nuncio to crown the image of Our Lady of Walsingham in the chapel. Immediately following the ceremony, two white doves flew onto the lap of the Marian statue in question – an event interpreted as miraculous by those present.

Pope Francis then raised the status of the chapel and shrine to that of a minor basilica in 2015.

Since Leo XIII’s prophecy, there has been much speculation among Catholics, especially those in England, surrounding the revival and restoration of pilgrimage to and devotions at Walsingham, which Eamon Duffy, noted professor at the University of Cambridge, describes as central to English Catholicism.

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“By the early 15th century, Walsingham’s religious celebrity was exceeded only by Becket’s shrine at Canterbury, and perhaps not even by that,” Duffy notes.

“There is no way of measuring the psychic and emotional impact of the sudden destruction of England’s greatest Marian shrine.”

Prof Duffy points out that the destruction of the replica of the Holy House of Nazareth, which the shrine housed and is said to have been angelically and miraculously built following apparitions to Saxon noblewoman Lady Richeldis de Feverches, was followed by a 1537 traditionalist Catholic plot amongst locals from in and around Walsingham.

It was brutally put down, which led to the execution of “a number of Walsingham men, including the sub-prior of the monastery”.

However, “[t]he memory of Walsingham’s reputation as England’s Nazareth, a ‘Holy Land’, lingered till the end of the century, and is reflected in a cluster of (occasionally disreputable) Elizabethan love poems, including Ophelia’s song in the mad scene in Hamlet”.

From October 2024, the incoming Augustinian friars will each minister to contemporary pilgrims as members of the Shrine Team.

“We give thanks to Almighty God, Our Lady of Walsingham, and Saint Augustine of Hippo that we can soon rejoice in the restoration of the spirituality and service of the Augustinian Order to our restored and vibrant holy Shrine and place of pilgrimage today,” said Fr Billing.

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Photo: Catholics take part in a Dowry of Mary pilgrimage to Walsingham at the remains of the single arch on the eastern side of the Shrine. (Credit: mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk.)

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