Pope Benedict Appoints New Bishop Of Wrexham

The head of the Catholic church Pope Benedict XVI has today appointed the new Bishop of Wrexham.

Monsignor Peter M. Brignall will be officially appointed at an Episcopal Ordination at at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Wrexham on Wednesday 12th September.

It follows the retirement of Bishop Edwin Regan who has served Wrexham since December 1994.

Mgr Brignall, 58, was the ordained priest for the Diocese of Menevia by Bishop Langton Fox in 1978 and has been Cathedral Dean of St. Mary’s since 1999 and Vicar General of the Diocese since 2003.

He is a Trustee of the Diocese and chairs the Board of Diocesan Trustees. He also chairs the Diocesan Liturgical Commission and is the Bishop’s Advisor on Health Care Chaplaincy.

Mgr Brignall said: “I am delighted for Bishop Edwin that he is now able to take his well-deserved retirement and after having overcome the initial astonishment of the Holy Father’s expression of confidence in me, am humbled and honoured to accept this appointment and to be able again to commit my life to the service of the Catholic Church in North Wales, a church that now 35 years ago I chose and offered to work in and for on leaving London.

“Earlier this year we celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Diocese of Wrexham and we are still very young in the 3rd millennium, so any plans I might have for the future are first and foremost to build on the foundations laid by the first two Bishops of Wrexham, Bishop James Hannigan and Bishop Edwin Regan.

“Just a month after my ordination as bishop the church begins the ‘Year of Faith’, a year in which Pope Benedict XVI invites Catholics to rediscover the gift of faith and so seek new ways of proclaiming it. I could do no better than taking that as the starting point of my ministry, indeed as the whole purpose of my ministry in Wales for years to come.”