From 1716, the Duke of Gordon would take on the mantle of main protector of the Scottish Catholic Church in the North, and it was to his...

The first attempt to start a seminary on Scottish soil was opened in Glenlivet as early as 1699, before the bishops had even conceived...

When Bishop Nicolson visited the Catholic communities around the country he saw the clergy crisis for himself. The Mission’s most urgent...

The authorities in Rome, perhaps understandably, took some time to address the new conditions in Europe. We can point to several key...

In the south of Scotland two or three small neighbourhoods still hung on to their Catholic Faith, centred on the houses of recusant...

By now Catholics were reduced to little more than two percent of the population. They were unevenly spread, since their survival depended...

Through the cumulative effect of the Penal Laws the small Catholic community became a Church mainly of the poor, landless and uneducated,...

Three aspects of the penal laws proved especially damaging. The first was the outlawing of the priests. The thinking behind it was ‘take...

For a while we are going to enjoy excerpts from " Scalan: Leaves from the Master's Day Book" by Dr. John Watts... In 1560 the Scottish...

Bishop Hay was clandestinely consecrated Coadjutor to Bishop James Grant, the Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District, in 1769, in the...