The overall number of those received into the Catholic Church of the United Kingdom at Easter this year is lower than last year, though some dioceses in Wales and in southern England have dramatically increased their number of converts, reports the English Catholic weekly “The Tablet”. The magazine has compiled a statistical chart of the “elect”, the aspiring Catholics who participate, on the first Sunday in Lent, in the “Rite of Election” by which the Church announces the names of those who will receive Baptism, Confirmation and First Communion during the Easter Vigil. According to the figures published by “The Tablet”, the overall number of those received into the English Catholic Church at Easter this year has dropped by a fifth over the previous year. At Southwark Cathedral in South London, however, there were 3483 elect, a quarter more than last year, almost all of them immigrants who have recently arrived in this area of London, because new apartment blocks have been built there. In Wales, too, where Catholics are thin on the ground, the number of those received into the Church this year has actually increased. In the two dioceses of Wrexham and Cardiff the elect were double those in 2006 and 2005. According to Peter Collins, dean of Cardiff Cathedral, those who join the Catholic Church wish to give a deeper sense to their life. “Those who become Catholics”, he said, “reject modern life, the spiritual emptiness that characterises it, and the impotence felt within it. These people find a personal miracle in faith”.
