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Obituary: Canon Peter C. Edwards

by
25 May 2018

The Very Revd Paul Kennington writes:

CANON Peter Clive Edwards, who died on 4 May, aged 68, was the adopted child of Dudley and Joan Edwards, and attended Ardingly School as a child. After attending the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea, where he graduated in 1972 with a London University degree in English, he taught first at Sir William Borlase Grammar School in Marlow, and later at Caterham School, where he was fondly remembered for his imagination and enthusiasm in the drama department.

In 1983, he began ordination training at St Stephen’s House, and was ordained deacon in 1985 and priest in 1986 in the diocese of Southwark. Peter served his title at St Augustine’s, Lee, in Grove Park, before moving to Christ the King, Salfords, where he was Vicar from 1990 to 1997. In 1997, he moved to St Mary’s, Newington, before moving to Spain in 2003.

After a short sabbatical rest, he took up a post in 2004 as a chaplain in the team of Holy Spirit, Costa Blanca, and became senior chaplain in 2009. In 2012, Peter was made a Canon of the cathedral chapter of the diocese in Europe. He retired in 2015.

The chaplaincy team writes: “Under his proficient pastoral oversight as Senior Chaplain, he nurtured a warm, open, accommodating, and gently Catholic expression of church life across the eight congregations of the chaplaincy. With this he combined gifts of meticulous pastoral care, a sense of humour, and a confident, no-nonsense approach to church life. He was warmly accepted and appreciated as a colleague by the local Roman Catholic clergy, and did much to deepen ecumenical relations in Costa Blanca.”

Peter had many friends around the world and will be remembered both as a caring and loving person, who sought out the vulnerable and weak, and also as a strong-minded person, who was a great advocate for Catholic teaching and order. He was committed to bringing people to a personal faith in Christ, and was the spiritual director of Southwark Anglican Cursillo from 2000 to 2004. He had become equally committed to the ordination of women to the priesthood, being involved in the early 1990s with the founding of the Society of Catholic Priests.

He will be remembered by his friends and family as a loyal friend, an entertaining colleague, and a faithful priest of many years. His embrace of modern technology did not dissuade him from regular hour-long phone calls, during which he was able to recount stories and happenings in the most entertaining and sometimes extraordinarily detailed way: he was a master of the English language and a great storyteller.

Peter was much loved by his stepmother, Shirley, with whom he had an easy, happy and companionable relationship, and his cousin Mary, and his nephews and nieces, and his life-partner, Ian, with whom he lived in Spain. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

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