Roughly a third of all Catholic clergy ordained in England and Wales over the past three decades have come from the Anglican Communion, a new report launched Thursday in London shows, giving for the first time some sign of the scope and scale of the contribution former Anglicans make to the pastoral and sacramental life of the Catholic Church.

About 700 former clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales, or Episcopal Church of Scotland have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992, a number that includes 16 former Anglican bishops and two bishops from the breakaway Continuing Anglican movement (as of December 2024), while nearly 500 formerly Anglican clerics have received Holy Orders in the Catholic Church between 1992 to 2024 (5 Permanent Deacons, 486 priests).

That accounts for nearly a third of diocesan priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales – 29 percent – while the number jumps to fully 35 percent of priestly ordinations over the same period in England and Wales when combined with those of men ordained for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (a broadly self-governing body created in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus, for Anglicans seeking full communion with Rome who wished to keep the traditions of Anglican worship that were compatible with Catholic faith).

Since 2015, nearly 1 in 10 Catholic priests ordained in England and Wales have been former Anglican clergy (9 percent), while 19 percent of ordinations to the diocesan and Ordinariate priesthood over the 2015 – 2024 period in England and Wales were of formerly Anglican clerics.

Titled Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain: The role of the St Barnabas Society, the report was commissioned by the St. Barnabas Society and conducted by the St. Benedict XVI Centre for Religion, Ethics, and Society (of which this journalist was a founding external affiliate).

The St. Barnabas Society is a Catholic outreach that traces its origins to the pastoral solicitude of Pope Leo XIII for Anglican clerics seeking to convert to Catholicism in the wake of his bull, Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican orders invalid.

Anglican clerics who convert to Catholicism almost invariably face challenges including loss of income, pension, and even their homes (which often are owned by the Church of England and purposed to house active clergy). They come into communion with Rome later in life, often with families to support and little in the way of marketable skills or experience outside ministry, and quite without any guarantee of acceptance as candidates for ordination.

Even when they are accepted as candidates for ordination, it can take months or years for them to be ordained and to enter ministry.

“What I think would surprise anyone,” the director of the study and chief author of the report, Prof. Stephen Bullivant of St. Mary’s University, Twickenham and St. Mary’s University, Australia, and director of the Benedict XVI Society told Crux, “was just how grateful the Church in England and Wales should be to the sacrifices that these priests and their families have made.”

Bullivant of he was surprised by the scale and scope of former Anglicans’ contributions to Catholic ministry.

“I had a sense that it was quite a big number, a bigger number than people thought,” Bullivant said, but was “taken aback by the fact that it’s basically a third of all ordinations over the past 30 years.”

“I think everyone’s taken aback by that because the bishops themselves only know their own patch,” Bullivant also said.

Now, that is changing.

The report also carries a forward by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who praises the work of the St. Barnabas Society and the report for bringing “together so many disparate stories and facts, from across this period from 1992 until 2024, of those who have made this journey.”

“It is fascinating reading,” Nichols writes, “not only in its collating of facts and figures, but also in so many personal testimonies and insights.”

“[The story of many of those who have come into the full communion of the Catholic Church,” Nichols writes, “[is] not so much a turning away or rejection of their rich and precious Anglican heritage but an experience of an imperative to move into the full visible communion of the Catholic Church, in union with the See of Peter.”

Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri