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R.C. Bishop at Bangor

Archbishop O’Hara, the UK’s Apostolic Delegate, alights from a Rolls-Royce to re-dedicate the re-built Church of Our Lady Immaculate, Bangor, and delivers a papal message.

Non-Fiction 1960 9 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales

Overview

Record of the visit to Bangor of Archbishop Gerald Patrick Aloysius O'Hara, Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain, to re-dedicate the Church of Our Lady Immaculate. After a service at the church, Catholics from all over north Wales are seen entering the Plaza Cinema for a reception, where the Archbishop reads out a message from the Pope and the Manchester-based MacSwiney Pipe Band (which preceded the Archbishop on his drive to and from the church in a Rolls-Royce) performs.

American Archbishop O’Hara, Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain from 1954 until his death in 1963, was the first papal representative to visit the Houses of Parliament (in 1960) for over 400 years. This record of his visit to Bangor was shot and narrated by David Sutcliffe, a BBC stringer and operator of local cinemas, in which this title would have been screened. The re-dedication ceremony was attended by representatives of other denominations including the leader of the town’s Jewish population and the Mayor of Bangor. The celebrations in the cinema concluded with the papal anthem and Wales’ national anthem. ‘In the Nick’ would be screened later on that day, according to advertising posters.