Bishop David Waller has become the first Bishop and only the second Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, following his episcopal ordination on Saturday, on the memorial of English martyrs John Fisher and Thomas More.
Bishop Anthony Randazzo attended the ordination, in his capacity as Apostolic Administrator of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, as Bishop Waller received his episcopal consecration from Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández at Westminster Cathedral.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, and Bishop Stephen Lopes, Bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in the United States and Canada, also participated in the ceremony, alongside clergy from across the United Kingdom, from both within the Ordinariate and without.
In his homily, Cardinal Fernández praised the Ordinariate, which allows Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving “the legitimate prestige and worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican Communion.”
“The Ordinariate is invited to see the positive aspects of the Anglican tradition preserved in it ‘as a precious gift… and as a treasure to be shared,’” the Cardinal said, quoting the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.
“In this process, the Church not only gives but is also enriched. We can say, therefore, that the Ordinariate represents one of the faces of the Church which, in this case, receives certain elements of the rich history of the Anglican tradition: elements that are now lived out in the fullness of Catholic communion.”
In an address at the end of the ceremony, Bishop Waller thanked the Holy Father, Pope Francis for appointing him to the episcopacy.
He also thanked Bishop Randazzo for travelling across the world to attend the ordination, acknowledging the immense efforts that had been made to allow him to attend.
Following his consecration, Waller become the first former Anglican clergy member to lead a Personal Ordinariate as Bishop.
Monsignor Keith Newton, who had been ordinary of the Ordinariate since its inception in 2011, had not been eligible to receive episcopal ordination as a married man but because Waller was a celibate, he was able to receive episcopal ordination.
Pope Francis appointed Waller as the new leader of the ordinariate in April after accepting the resignation Monsignor Newton, the group’s first ordinary.
Bishop David Waller was born in London on 10 June 1961 and received education at the School of St David and St Katharine in Hornsey and the College of Ripon and York St John, University of Leeds.
He worked as a social worker until 1989, when he left to train for Anglican orders. He was ordained a deacon in 1991 and priest in 1992 within the Church of England.
During Holy Week in 2011, he was received into full communion with the Catholic Church and received Holy Orders. For the past four years, he had served as Vicar General of the Ordinariate.