Page 11 - The Portal magazine - June 2024

THE P RTAL June 2024 Page 11

OBITUARY

John Hunwicke

13 March 1941 - 30 April 2024

By Mgr Andrew Burnham (Bishop of Ebbsfleet, 2000-2010;

Priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham from 2011)

FTER OXFORD and a curacy or two, John Hunwicke led the secluded life of a classics master at
ALancing College, West Sussex, for nearly thirty years. The college chapel, where he served as assistant
chaplain, was certainly ‘high’, the loftiest of school chapels. In another sense, none was ‘higher’ than Fr
Hunwicke (almost never ‘Fr John’) who published entertaining and scholarly liturgical footnotes in his
annual Ordo.

Once the internet was established, and Fr Hunwicke
was safely aboard the barque of Peter, the footnotes
of his Ordo became ‘Fr Hunwicke’s Liturgical Notes’,
delighting traditional Catholics throughout the
English-speaking world. Later the blog became
‘Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment’, alluding to a
process outlined by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 in
which the ‘Ordinary Form’ of the Mass should be
enriched by – and enrich – the ‘Extraordinary Form’
(the pre-conciliar rite as consolidated in 1962).
Traditionis Custodes (2021) presented Fr Hunwicke
with a particular challenge: ‘PF’ or ‘Bergoglio’ – the
abbreviations he used – was undermining, in his view,
what Pope Benedict had achieved, and Hunwicke
fought hard for the traditionalist cause. out as needed in the Oxford Mission but soon found
his way back to the Oxford Oratory, where the
The ecclesiastical authorities always regarded Fr Oxford Mission had begun. He helped the younger
Hunwicke as a tricky customer. Archetypical Anglo- Oratorians with their Latin – he was by all accounts a
Catholic, he was clever, humorous, and mischievous, superb teacher – and made himself useful to the Latin
and could not easily be constrained. Those who got Mass Society.
to know him found him loyal, personable, and warm.
His ordination in the Catholic Church was a year A week before he died of cancer, Fr Hunwicke
later than the clergy who crossed the Tiber with him inserted a note into his blog: The Pancreatic nastiness
and several influential Catholics behind the scenes stops me from getting out to Libraries and Archives;
championed his case. I myself was involved in a final so bits of these pieces are lifted &c. Readers of ‘Fr
interview: I had been at a similar interview in 2007, Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment’ were nonetheless
when Hunwicke applied for the post of St Thomas the somewhat bemused to find that daily publication of his
Martyr, Oxford, where he served for four years before blog continued after his death and that he had posted
becoming a Catholic. some repeats of previous years’ entries ahead of time.

In the first case I was Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Hunwicke’s Fr Hunwicke was happily married to Pamela for 57
bishop, interceding with an archdeacon. In the second years. Their five children and grandchildren were at
case I was an Assistant to the Ordinary, an Ordinariate his bedside when he peacefully died on 30 April. For
priest interceding with a local bishop. him that would have been the feast of St Catherine of
Siena, herself a galvaniser of reigning Popes. Followers
Once admitted as a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of modern Calendars would have kept her feast the
of Our Lady of Walsingham, Fr Hunwicke helped day before, on the date that she actually died.