For additional information or to reserve your spot, contact our U.S. Office at (202) 536-4555  or email us at [email protected]

Inside the Vatican Pilgrimage In the Footsteps of Saint Thomas More & Blessed John Henry Newman August 2 – 13, 2016  Oxford and London

A Personal Invitation from Dr. Robert Moynihan:

Dear Friend,

Once again we set out on pilgrimage, this time to a land many of us will feel comfortable in: Merrie England.

Dr. Robert Moynihan

And there will be a certain “merriment” in this journey, for we will travel with joyful companions, our friends from England, Leonie and Tessa Caldecott (the widow and daughter of the late Stratford Caldecott, one of the great Catholic editors and writers of the past half century), in the footsteps of the great English saints: St. Thomas a Becket, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, St. Edmund Campion, Blessed John Henry Newman, and the writers known as the “Inklings,” J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S.Lewis and the incomparable G.K.Chesterton. With such companions, our days will be merry, and our mornings and evenings bathed in the gentle light of a British summertime.

We will begin at Oxford, the ancient university which will be our home for several days. We will get to know the colleges of Oxford, its great library, its pathways and byways, its churches and, yes, its pubs, where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis sometimes dined together. The days will include a steady diet of reflection, in the presentations of some of England’s most thoughtful Catholics of our time, as they instruct us on the history of the Church in England, the life and times of Thomas More and John Fisher, of William Shakespeare, and on down to more recent times. Day by day we will study, and learn, and come to understand what the faith has meant to the British, how it shaped their hearts and minds, how it passed through persecution and apostasy, and how it is being lived today in the very places where it was lived by these great saints and writers.

After we have passed three or four days preparing ourselves intellectually and spiritually, we will be ready to set forth on our pilgrimage, first up to the city of London, and then, to Canterbury, where St. Augustine landed, when he brought the faith to England at the time of Pope Gregory the Great.

“The man who is tired of London is tired of life,” said the great writer Samuel Johnson in the late 1700s, at the time when the United States was being formed, breaking away from English rule. We will be staying in London, in comfortable lodgings, and from there we will visit the key sites we must visit, contemplate, and remember: the great cathedrals, Westminster and St. Paul’s, Parliament, the British Museum, the Tower of London, where St. Thomas More was imprisoned before he was beheaded, “The king’s good servant, but God’s first.” And we will have time, on our first evening, to visit the Globe Theater and attend a production of one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most troubling plays, Macbeth: the story of a king who was led into disaster by the counsels of his queen. A story full of resonance in a time when a great king had broken with Rome on account of a woman, and loyal Catholics had, a generation later, been tempted to commit regicide themselves in order to remedy that wrong.

We will celebrate Holy Mass each day, and take some time for quiet and rest. We will not rush from place to place so that you become exhausted. It will be a pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage filled with time to reflect and more deeply understand our faith. We will have booklets with us containing all of the readings for the daily liturgies, as well as passages from some of the great British saints and theologians to read and meditate on.

Finally, as our journey nears its end, we will take the famous road that Chaucer’s pilgrims took in his Canterbury Tales — down to the very end of England, where the faith was first brought to this island people, 15 centuries ago.

This journey will bring our pilgrimage to its conclusion, as we look out over the waves of the English Channel which separate us from France.

A journey in the footsteps of saints, a journey of study, meditation, reflection, but also a journey of immersion in British culture, the life of England in past centuries, and today. You will come to understand England, and the story of the faith in England, in a profound way that will never leave you. You will be imbued with the spiritual wisdom of Thomas More, John Fisher, Edmund Campion, and John Henry Newman, and you will bring home with you that peace which those souls brought into the world in their struggles, triumphs, and witness.

The entire journey has been carefully structured so that each day builds on the day before. Step by step, your faith will be deepened. So please accept my heartfelt “Welcome” as you begin this journey with us, from Oxford to Canterbury and many places in between, in the footsteps of St. Thomas More and of Blessed John Henry Newman.

I hope to greet you soon in Merrie England, along the banks of the River Thames.
– Robert Moynihan
Founder and Editor of Inside the Vatican magazine

Join Inside the Vatican for this once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage!

For additional information or to reserve your spot, contact our U.S. Office at (202) 536-4555  or email us at [email protected]

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Pilgrimage Overview

Travel with Dr. Robert Moynihan, Deborah Tomlinson, and friends of Inside the Vatican magazine In the Footsteps of Saint Thomas More & Blessed John Henry Newman

Signature Pilgrimage:

Our England August 2016 pilgrimage is part of our premier line of Signature Pilgrimages — limiting the number of pilgrims to 15 for a peaceful and personal experience. In addition, Dr. Robert Moynihan, Founder and Editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, and Deborah Tomlinson, Chief Operations Officer, will be traveling with the pilgrims for the entire pilgrimage

  • Private, first-class motor coach bus and all group transfers are included.

  • All local taxes, porter fees and porter tips are included.

  • All entrance fees are included.

  • All meals are included.

Oxford 
  • Spend 4 nights at the 5-Star hotel, Randolph Hotel, lunch at the Eagle & Child pub, the famous meeting place of the Inklings and other famous pubs in Oxford

  • Attend seminars at Oxford University

  • Tour Oxford’s Bodleian Library, one of the oldest libraries in Europe

  • Visit the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and climb to the copula for breathtaking views of Oxford

  • Walking tour of Blessed John Henry Newman’s Oxford

  • Excursion to Littlemore to visit the International Centre of Newman Friends and the sites where Newman lived, prayed and studied before his conversion and converted. Attend Mass in the chapel where Thomas More converted

  • Celebrate Sunday Mass at the Oxford Oratory

London
  • Spend 6 nights at the Grange Beauchamp Hotel

  • Attend a performance of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

  • Walking tour of the early years of St. Thomas More including Milk Street, St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Lawrence Jewry, and Guildhall.

  • Celebrate Mass in Brompton Oratory, Tyburn convent, Westminster Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Church and the cell of Thomas More

  • Walk through the Holy Door in Westminster Cathedral

  • Visit Westminster Abbey, House of Parliament and Westminster Hall where Thomas More was tried and Pope Benedict XVI delivered his in 2010, Tower of London and the Tower Hill where St. Thomas More was executed

  • Journey to Chelsea to see the site of St. Thomas More’s family home and visit Chelsea Old Church and Old Chelsea Library

  • Visit Tyburn convent and be greeted by the Mother Superior and share English tea with her as we listen to her thoughts on the many English martyrs who were hung, drawn, and quartered near this convent

  • Day trip to Canterbury, the Cathedral where St. Thomas Becket was martyred and to the shrine of St Augustine, the “Apostle to the English,” in Ramsgate on the Sea

  • Day trip to the the beautiful palace of Hampton Court (photo above) on the Thames River

  • Dine with friends of Inside the Vatican magazine at some our favorite pubs and restaurants in England.

For additional information or to reserve your spot, contact our US Office at (202) 536-4555  or email us at [email protected]

Seminars in Oxford: Speakers and Topics

Dr. Robert Moynihan is founder and editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine. He has knowledge of five languages and is a seasoned Vatican analyst. He earned his B.A. in English, magna cum laude from Harvard and a M.A and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale. Dr. Moynihan’s thesis was The Influence of Joachim of Fiore on the Early Franciscans: A Study of the Commentary Super Hieremiam. Other research fields included: History of Christianity, Later Roman Empire and The Age of Chaucer. Moynihan also received a Diploma in Latin Letters from Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. Seminar Topic: The crisis of English Catholicism with a focus on how the Reformation changed the face of Anglophone culture.

Dr. Gerard Kilroy is the author of Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Ashgate 2015). He read Classics and English at Oxford and obtained his doctorate from Lancaster University. He has held fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and St Catherine’s College Oxford, and a visiting professorship at Masaryk University, Brno. He is a consultant to a group at Tischner and Jagiellonian Universities, Krakow, working on ‘Subversive publication in Early Modern England and Poland’. He is a frequent contributor to Recusant History, a journal of research into post-reformation history in the British Isles. He is also an Honorary Visiting Fellow at University College London. Seminar Topic: The life and capture of St. Edmund Campion.

Lady Clare Asquith, Countess of Asquith and Oxford is the author of Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (Public Affairs Books NY 2005). She obtained her degree in English at St Anne’s College Oxford and first developed her ideas about sixteenth-century recusant code after observing coded messages in Soviet dissident theatre, while her husband Raymond Asquith served as a diplomat in Moscow during the Cold War. She has lectured all over the world and her research has been hailed by the Catholic writer Piers Paul Read as “dramatic, important” and a work of “painstaking scholarship”. She is currently working on a study of Shakespeare’s narrative poems. Seminar Topic: An analysis on Shakespeare as a dissident writer and the theme of regicide in Macbeth, which we will later see at Shakespeare’s own theatre, the Globe.

Katherine Turley is the Lecturer in Literature at Newman College, an excellent new academic institution in Ireland, where she also teaches Gregorian Chant. A direct descendant of St Thomas More, she obtained her MA in English Literature from Oxford University. Seminar Topic: The importance and sanctity of St. Thomas More.

Father Jerome Bertram from the Oxford Oratory will accompany us on August 6th to Littlemore and speak about Newman’s journey of faith. He will also celebrate Mass for us in the chapel there where Newman was received into the Catholic Church. As well as being an Oratorian and the librarian at the Oxford Oratory, Father Jerome also is an author, who has written on prayer, Scripture, the priestly life, and a small but comprehensive booklet on ‘Newman’s Oxford’.

Inside the Vatican Pilgrimages is collaborating with our friends in England, Leonie and Teresa Caldecott on this pilgrimage. Leonie and Teresa are the wife and eldest daughter of the late Stratford Caldecott, with whom, in the 1990s, Leonie founded the Second Spring Centre for Faith and Culture and its journal. Leonie and Teresa now work together, editing the UK/Eire edition of Magnificat and running courses and events on Catholic culture in the UK. Leonie is also the UK editor of the online journal Humanum, published by the John Paul II Institute in Washington DC. Leonie will travel with us on the entire pilgrimage.

Seminar Topic: In Oxford, Leonie will speak on the importance of 19th century Christian and medievalist revival in England.

We will make every effort to adhere to the printed program and itinerary. On rare occasions, it may be necessary to adjust arrangements due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control (including such circumstances as the weather, airline schedule changes, hotel requisitions, political disturbances, or transportation mechanical problems). Should such adjustment be necessary, a substitution will be made to the best of our abilities.

Join Inside the Vatican for this once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage!

For more additional or to reserve your spot, contact our U.S. Office at (202) 536-4555  or email us at [email protected]

We have many pilgrimages in 2016     2016 Pilgrimages