Joseph Rudderham

Joseph Rudderham, Seventh Bishop of Clifton, 1949 to 1974

The future Bishop was born at Norwich on 17 June 1899. He was educated at St Bede's, Manchester; St Edmund's, Ware; Christ's College, Cambridge, and the Venerable English College, Rome, where he was ordained in 1926. He served at All Saints, Peterborough from 1927 until 1932 as curate, and from 1932 until 1943 as parish priest. From 1943 until his appointment to Clifton, he was Administrator of Northampton Cathedral. He also served as Diocesan Inspector of Schools from 1941 until 1949. His consecration by Archbishop Joseph Masterson was on 26 July 1949, at the Pro-Cathedral.

The new Bishop soon found himself enmeshed in the many difficulties created by the 1944 Education act and the raising of the school-leaving age which had come into effect in 1948. As a means of raising the necessary funds to provide new schools, the Bishop was forced to inaugurate a Diocesan Development Fund, raising a levy on each parish in the diocese.

Three other tasks faced the Bishop in the 1960's and the 1970's. First came the attendance at the various sessions of the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, and the putting into effect the recommendations of the Council, many of which were not well received by the older generations of Catholics. Then came the debates over the Papal Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae'. Again there was widespread disagreement among Catholics. Finally, there was a more pleasant task, the planning and the supervision of the building of the new Clifton Cathedral. In front of a vast gathering of church and civic dignitaries, the Bishop took possession of the new Cathedral on the Feast of SS Peter and Paul 1973. He retired to Nazareth House at Cheltenham in 1975, where he died on 24 February 1979.