You Can't Make This Up!

For the first time since Henry VIII broke away from Rome and set the English Reformation on its course, a Catholic Mass has been celebrated in Beverley Minster, according to The Catholic Herald:

The first Mass celebrated by a bishop since the reign of Henry VIII has taken place in Beverley Minster.

The Mass marked the 50th anniversary of a local Catholic primary school named after St John of Beverly.

Bishop Terence Drainey of Middlesbrough celebrated the Mass, which was attended by teachers, students and their families.

“It was a very great privilege to be able to celebrate Mass in a place which has been a focus of prayer and worship for hundreds of years,” he said. “St John of Beverley is a major figure in our Catholic and English cultural history. He is the second patron of our diocese as well as being the patron of the Roman Catholic school in Beverley whose anniversary we were celebrating.”

St. John of Beverley was really a royal saint--King Henry V urged devotion to the saint after his victory at Agincourt! Henry VIII ordered his shrine destroyed in 1541, but his bones were found again in 1664 and reburied with a new shrine.