Pope Francis has launched the most ambitious Catholic renewal project for 60 years with a listening exercise that aims to give every member of the 1.3 billion Church a stake in its future. A new podcast series tells the story of the reform process.

The CCS Newsletter for the Michaelmas term has been published.

We are excited to share with you some very good news – Dr William (Billy) Crozier, who recently completed his PhD with the Centre for Catholic Studies, has been awarded a three-year Leverhulme post-doctoral fellowship. It will be in Franciscan theology and will held here at the CCS at Durham University.

Centre for Catholic Studies members offer some thoughts about the COVID-19 pandemic, offering some words of hope, consolation, food for thought and more. Click on the links below to read more.

The CCS is delighted to welcome Dr Sarah Barthélemy to the CCS Staff Team from 1 September 2021 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the History of Catholicism. Sarah will hold the Catherine de Francheville Fellowship and work on the activities of the Congregation of La Retraite from c.1650 to c.1820. The CCS is very grateful to the Congregation of La Retraite for funding this three-year full-time post.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome Dr Catherine Sexton to the Boundary Breaking Research Team: Examining the Ecclesial-Cultural Implications of Sex Abuse Within the Catholic Church. Dr Sexton has a professional background in international development having held senior management positions in VSO and then CAFOD as Head of International Programmes.

In 2020, through the activities of the Boundary Breaking Project examining the ecclesial-cultural implications of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic church in England and Wales, the Centre for Catholic Studies was one of a group of eight institutions and one individual expert in the field of Safeguarding to have agreed upon the creation of a Global Safeguarding Alliance (“GSA”).