Bishop of Lincoln remains suspended after appeal
THE Bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Revd Christopher Lowson, has lost the appeal against his suspension over a safeguarding issue, after it was dismissed by Dame Sarah Asplin, the President of Tribunals. Bishop Lowson was suspended in May. A statement said that the move was based on information provided by the police (News, 16 May). The Bishop of Grimsby, the Rt Revd David Court, is in temporary charge of Lincoln diocese, and the Bishop of Grantham, Dr Nicholas Chamberlain, is leading on safeguarding issues.
John Bradburne on path to becoming a saint
THE Vatican has set John Bradburne, the British missionary murdered in Zimbabwe in 1979 by pro-Mugabe fighters, on the road to canonisation. Mr Bradburne, a lay Franciscan, was the son of an Anglican rector, and arrived in what was then Rhodesia in 1962. He was shot by pro-Mugabe forces after being abducted from a leper community that he had refused to abandon during the war of liberation. Miracles and cures have been attributed to Mr Bradburne since his death. The cause will be officially launched at Mutemwa, the leprosy centre where he lived, on 5 September this year, the 40th anniversary of his murder.
Bishop sorry for redundant William Hill staff
THE bookmaker William Hill is to close 700 of its shops, threatening 4500 jobs, it was announced last week. The company blamed the Government’s decision to reduce the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) to £2. The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, a vocal critic of FOBTs, said that he was “deeply, deeply sorry” for the job losses. He told the BBC Radio 4 PM programme: “One of the problems is that . . . most of these jobs are in poorer areas. A lot of these shops only opened in recent years because these deeply addictive machines were proving so profitable. . . We need to look at how the online world is regulated.”
New music permissions scheme
HYMNS Ancient & Modern, the Church Times’s parent charity, has become the UK and European partner of One License, a US-based agent for copyrighted hymns and music. The agreement, signed this week, means that Hymns A&M will help to develop the service provided by One License, which is already used by 18,000 churches and schools in English-speaking countries. The company provides permissions to use a wide range of hymns and worship songs, which can be downloaded in various formats from its website under licences that range from annual to single-use. Publishers in the One License stable include Taizé, Iona, OUP, the Royal School of Church Music, Oregon Catholic Press, and Kevin Mayhew. onelicense.net