LONDON (CNS) — Three former Anglican bishops were received into the Catholic Church just hours after they officially gave up their ministries in the Church of England.

Bishops Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet, John Broadhurst of Fulham and Keith Newton of Richborough will be soon ordained as priests for a special Anglican ordinariate that will be set up in England later in January. Their resignations took effect at midnight Dec. 31, and they were received into the Catholic Church the afternoon of Jan. 1 during a Mass in London’s Westminster Cathedral.

They will be ordained as Catholic deacons at Allen Hall seminary, London, Jan. 13, then as priests at a ceremony in the cathedral Jan. 15. They will be incardinated into the English ordinariate, which is expected to be formed by papal decree the second week of January, when Pope Benedict XVI is also expected to appoint an ordinary.

The ordinariate will be the first to be created since the pope issued the apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus” Nov. 4, 2009, to allow the group reception of disaffected Anglo-Catholics into the Catholic Church.
Similar in structure to a military diocese, it permits former Anglicans to retain much of the patrimony and liturgical practices, such as married priests. Also received into the church at the Jan. 1 Mass were Judi Broadhurst, the wife of the former bishop of Fulham, and Gill Newton, the wife of the former bishop of Richborough.