The Right Revd Alan Hopes

The Right Reverend Alan Stephen Hopes was born in Oxford, England on 17th March 1944 and was educated at Oxford High School until he moved to London in 1956, when he attended Enfield Grammar School. In 1966 he took a degree in theology at King’s College London and then attended Warminster Theological College.

In 1968 he was ordained for ministry in the Church of England and served as an Anglican priest until 1994 when he was received into the Catholic Church.

He was ordained a Catholic priest on 4th December, 1995 and for three years served as Assistant Priest at Our Lady of Victories in Kensington, London, before becoming Parish Priest of the Holy Redeemer and St Thomas More Parish, Chelsea.

In 2001, Cormac, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor appointed him Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Westminster and in 2002 became a member of The Bishops’ Conference Committee for Liturgy and Worship. The following year on 4th January 2003 he was appointed by Pope (now Saint) John Paul II as an Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster with the title of Titular Bishop of Cuncacestre (Chester-le-Street) successor to Saint Cuthbert.

This appointment made him one of the most senior members of Catholic clergy to have converted in the 1990s. On 24th January 2003 he was ordained to the Episcopate in Westminster Cathedral by Cormac, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor.

In October 2010, Bishop Hopes was appointed as Episcopal Delegate of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI to enable those members of the Church of England seeking full communion with the Catholic Church to be received and maintain many of their liturgical practices.

On 11th June 2013, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Hopes as the fourth Bishop of East Anglia and he was duly installed on 16th July 2013 at St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich.

In November 2014 Bishop Hopes was made a Knight Commander with Star of The Equestrian Order of The Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.