Named in honor of St. John Fisher, the Catholic chaplaincy at England’s Cambridge University — Fisher House — has cared for the needs of Catholic undergraduates for more than 90 years, ensuring an active Catholic presence at one of the most prestigious schools in the world.

Of course, Cambridge, like its counterpart Oxford, was established in the early Middle Ages as an entirely Catholic institution.

The names of its colleges — Magdalene, Trinity, St. John’s — point to those Catholic roots.

This was a place where generations of clergy studied and where the very notion of learning was bound up with the Catholic faith.

All that changed with the Protestant Reformation. When King Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 16th century and established what was to become the Church of England, the Catholic heritage at Cambridge suffered along with that of every other institution in the country.

St. John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was a leading figure of the university — he founded the colleges today known as Christ’s College and St. John’s — and was among the first Catholic heroes to die a martyr’s death in defense of the faith.

He was confessor to Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, whom the king abandoned for Anne Boleyn and divorced in defiance of the Pope. St. John Fisher was executed at London’s Tower Hill in 1534 for refusing to accept the king’s usurpation of the headship of the Catholic Church in England.

Fisher House was opened here in 1924 in a former pub.

When Catholics first started to attend the university again, in 1895 — after some 400 years of official persecution — it became clear that a center for Sunday Mass and Catholic life was needed.

Today Fisher House has a large room for Masses, a library and a weekday chapel. It runs an “open house” for Catholics and their friends for lunch on Sundays. There is a program of activities with talks on different topics and a full-time chaplain with two assistants.

The chaplaincy is funded through the Cambridge University Catholic Association, which is now appealing for funds.

The premises are in the heart of the old city center of Cambridge. The room used for Sunday Mass has for a long time also been rented out during the week for commercial use. Redevelopment of the city-center district means that this will no longer be financially viable. Thus the association is seeking help to ensure the chaplaincy’s future.

Mass Appeal

“Sunday Mass attendance at the chaplaincy is between about 430 and 500, and we always also have a good attendance for weekday Masses,” the chaplain, Franciscan Father Alban McCoy, told the Register. “Without any doubt the Mass is the most important thing we offer.”

“There are three Masses each Sunday, including a sung Latin one” he says. “The liturgy is of course the center of Catholic life; the other thing is to offer a level of Catholic teaching that will really nurture faith and is commensurate with the intellectual level of university life.

“Catholic contacts are also important,” adds Father McCoy. “A large number of people meet here and make friends who are important for the rest of their lives. And it is not only young people meeting each other; it is also young Catholic undergraduates meeting senior Catholic members of the university. That’s something that is very important and valuable.”

St. John Fisher is honored at Fisher House. “Every year we celebrate our annual Fisher Mass as a huge celebration,” explains Father McCoy. “We are allowed to use the [Anglican] University church, everyone wears robes, and there is a great party afterwards. St. John Fisher was a towering figure of the university. His academic and scholarly work, his initiatives in establishing libraries and his pastoral care — all would have made him an outstanding figure even if he had not become, as he did, a cardinal and a martyr.”

Fisher House has set a fund-raising target of 2 million pounds. The plan is for the chaplain to no longer have to spend time each week removing furniture and fittings from the Sunday Mass room to make it available for commercial use during the week. The whole of the chaplaincy will be dedicated to full-time Catholic use.

Plus the library, with its program of talks, Bible studies, Masses and other activities, will be secure.

Catholic Cambridge graduates all affirm the importance of having a Catholic presence at the heart of their university.

“It meant that when you arrived, a complete stranger starting university life, there was this Catholic center and a place of contact,” says alumna Dora Nash, who now serves as head of religious education at The Oratory School in Reading.

“You could meet your friends at the 12:15 daily Mass, and that made a focus,” she adds. “And the system of having a Catholic representative at every college, linked to the chaplaincy, meant that no young Catholic arriving at university was left stranded.”

A wide range of fund-raising events — from a harpsichord recital to a special reunion of former students in Hong Kong — is being held by an appeal committee, which is headed by professor Jonathan Riley-Smith (who is considered Britain’s leading authority on the Crusades).

“Catholics comprise more than 10% of the undergraduate and postgraduate members of the University of Cambridge,” he says. “The university has a high reputation in the United Kingdom and overseas and entry into it is very competitive. The chaplaincy is therefore responsible for caring for and nurturing the faith of some of the brightest young Catholics from Britain and abroad.”

For more information on Fisher House, and on its appeal, go to www.srcf.ucam.org/fisherhouse on the Internet.

Joanna Bogle writes

from London.