It’s never too late: 78-year-old Cambridge professor and renowned Cromwellian scholar ordained a priest

A world-renowned academic and Cambridge professor was ordained to the Catholic priesthood at St John’s Cathedral in Norwich on 21 September – and despite being older than the usual mandatory retirement age for a parish priest.

Seventy-eight-year-old John Morrill, also formerly a deacon for 28 years, was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Peter Collins, watched by a 250-strong congregation of clergy, family, friends, former students and university colleagues, notes the website of the Diocese of East Anglia.

“This man has heard the voice of God calling to him on so many occasions, a man who has willingly and generously responded to the call of Jesus in so many ways across a lifetime,” Bishop Peter said in his homily, while highlighting the related role played by Morrill’s late wife, Frances, “who was your true tutor in the Catholic faith”.

“John has a global academic reputation and has earned accolades and fellowships too many to mention. He has written a tottering tower of books and produced a cascade of learned papers and more projects approach completion even now.

“I cannot fail to mention how poignant it is that the world’s most renowned Cromwellian scholar is about to be ordained as a Catholic priest.”

Addressing the congregation after his ordination, Fr John Morrill said: “God is a God of surprises and the challenge of ordination was a matter of the head not the heart, until the last three years. God has sharp elbows and you can resist but you know that he is digging you in the ribs.”

Morrill has previously acknowledged how his faith journey has been anything but smooth. Brought up an Anglican, he has described how, after starting at Oxford University in 1964, “my faith wavered”. By the time he married Frances in 1968, he was practising his faith, but soon after he entered a period of “anguished agnosticism”, describing himself as “paradoxically being angry with God for not existing”.

While his wife remained a quietly faithful Catholic throughout this period, Morrill often sought solace by speaking with Fr Geoffrey Preston, a Dominican priest who had officiated at their wedding. “I always felt better after our conversations, but I still could not experience the presence of God,” Morrill reflects.

In 1977, Fr Geoffrey died unexpectedly and young, and Morrill attended his Requiem Mass in Leicester during Holy Week. It was here that everything changed: “I found the whole church full of the peace I had experienced when I was with him, and in an instant, I realised that when I was with Fr Geoffrey, I was with God. I had been thinking too much and opening my heart too little.”

From that moment, the diocese website describes, Morrill felt God enter his heart and his faith was restored. Six months later, on 8 December 1977, he was received into full communion with the Catholic Church at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Over the next 15 years, Morrill became more involved in parish life in the market town of Newmarket, while also working as a history lecturer and later as a professor at nearby Cambridge University. His role as a pastoral guide to students, combined with his growing involvement in taking Holy Communion to the housebound, deepened his faith further.

“Nothing did more to deepen my faith than this,” Morrill says of his time visiting a care home for those with advanced dementia. It was during this time that he sensed a new calling: “In prayer, it became clear that God was calling me to link these two things – pastoral care of the young and the old.”

In 1992, a conversation with Mgr Tony Rogers solidified this call. Morrill recalls: “I found myself involuntarily telling him I thought I was called to be a deacon. I was horrified and ashamed of my presumption, but [Mgr Tony] just said, ‘that is the other reason I came round this evening’.”

After three years of formation, Morrill was ordained a deacon in 1996. Reflecting on his 28 years of service, he said: “I had no idea what being a deacon would entail, nor how I could find the time for that service as well as being a good husband, father to our four daughters, and a hands-on academic.” Yet, he adds: “It turns out God can do with time what he does with loaves and fishes!”

In 2007, Morrill faced the loss of his wife through cancer. Reflecting on Frances’ life and death, Morrill says: “Her confidence in God’s love and mercy was a new source of inspiration.” While Bishop Michael Evans encouraged him to consider the priesthood after Frances’ death, Morrill felt no call at that time. He remained deeply committed to his vocation as a deacon, stating: “I believed and believe it to be a very different and important vocation.”

As he celebrated the silver jubilee of his ordination as a deacon, shortly after his 75th birthday, Morrill began to reflect on retirement.

“I was just beginning, for the first time, to feel a little stale,” he says. However, three significant pastoral events occurred in quick succession, all relating to sacraments he could not administer as a deacon; he describes these moments as “three mighty shoves in the ribs”, recognising them as direct calls from God, just like those he had received in 1977 and 1991.

After much prayer, retreats and study, and with the support of his spiritual director and Bishop Peter, Morrill finally embraced this latest call to priesthood.

“Calling me after the mandatory retirement age of 75…suggests both that God has a sense of humour and that He thinks outside the box,” Morrill said.

Photo: Father John Morrill (left), along with his four daughters and Bishop Peter Collins; image from rcdea.org.uk.

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