New Archbishop

A Liverpool van-man's son this week ascended to the highest post in Britain's Roman Catholic hierarchy. Dr. William Godfrey, 67, was enthroned as Archbishop of Westminster, thus is just about certain to become a cardinal at the next consistory.

Pianoplaying, sports-loving Archbishop Godfrey is the very model of a modern British divine. As a small boy in a working-class district, he pointed early for the priesthood. "I never considered anything else seriously," he says. He went then to Ushaw College, a Catholic seminary in northern England, afterwards to the English College in Rome. Ordained in 1916, he stayed in Rome long enough to take a double doctorate (in divinity and philosophy), then returned to Liverpool as curate of St. Michael's Church and began the slow climb up the hierarchical ladder.

As apostolic delegate to Great Britain 15 years ago, Godfrey had such high praise for Bernard Griffin, then Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, that Griffin was elevated to Archbishop of Westminster and cardinal. Though ten years Godfrey's junior. Cardinal Griffin was ailing for years,* and when he died last August, Godfrey was his obvious successor. At Westminster Cathedral's three-hour ceremony of enthronement this week, he pointed out that the Communist denial of God's fatherhood "means in effect the denial of the brotherhood of mankind." In Britain, "which is professedly Christian . . . in many ways men have gone aside from Christ's teaching . . . Who would say that the ideal of marriage has not steadily deteriorated? ... It will be my firm endeavor, under God, to bring man back to the love of Christ."

* It was revealed only recently that Cardinal Griffin suffered his first heart attack when he was not yet twenty, while serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I. He concealed it from the medical authorities at first, however, and avoided a discharge which he feared might prevent his acceptance for the priesthood.

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