Bruce kent joe alwyn

The Independent Online – 19 June 2022

By Hugh O’Shaughnessy

Bruce Kent, who has died aged 92, was for decades one of the brightest stars in the Catholic firmament in Britain, helping the church out of a period of stifling and self-regarding clericalism and towards a concern for global problems, notably the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

Kent was born in Blackheath in 1929, the second of three children to Kenneth, a Canadian Presbyterian businessman, and his Catholic wife Mollie. In 1940 his mother and the three children went to Canada for safety, returning in 1943. Bruce and his brother were sent to Stonyhurst, the Jesuit-run public school in Lancashire. He very slowly came to love a place where the ethos was piety and the rule was flogging.

In October 1947 he started his two years of national service during which he was commissioned in the Royal Tank Regiment. During that time his interest in ordination was awakened by the powerful Jesuit preacher Father Joseph Christie. Kent realised that

"the best way I could live my life

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Bruce Kent CV and Biographical Information

b. London 22 June 1929 - d. London 8 June 2022

Education

• Lower Canada College, Montreal, 1940-43
• Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, 1943-46
• Brasenose College, Oxford, (Law) 1949-52
• St Edmund's College, Ware, (Catholic seminary) 1952-58
• Manchester University, Honorary Doctorate of Laws, 1987
• Middlesex University, Honorary Doctorate, 2002
• Brasenose College, Oxford, Honorary Fellow 2013
• Coventry University, Honorary Doctorate, 2021

Military Service

• 6th Royal Tank Regiment, 2nd Lt., 1947-49

Church Life

• Ordained, Diocese of Westminster, 1958,
• Curate Kensington/Notting Hill, 1958-62
• Chair, Westminster Schools Commission, 1964-66
• Chaplain, London University, 1966-74
• Chaplain, Pax Christi, 1974-77
• Parish Priest, Euston, 1977-80
• Retired from active ministry, February 1987

Campaigns

• Joined CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) 1960
• General Secretary and Chair, CND, 1980-90
• Chair, War on Want, 1974-76
• President, International Peace Bureau, 1985-92
• President, London Region United Nations Association,19
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  Bruce Kent: 22 June 1929 to 8 June 2022

  
  

  Photo by Lawrence Archer

  It was with great sadness, but deep gratitude for his life and gifts, that Bruce Kent's family announced his death, on 8 June 2022 after a short illness. He would have been 93 on 22 June 2022.

  At the time of his death Bruce was a Vice-President of CND, a Vice-President of Pax Christi, and Emeritus President of the Movement for the Abolition of War.

  After national service in the Royal Tank Regiment and a law degree at Brasenose College, Oxford, Bruce Kent was ordained a Catholic priest for the Diocese of Westminster. Between 1958 and 1987 he served in several London parishes, as secretary to Cardinal Heenan, and as the RC Chaplain to the University of London.

  It was his Christian faith that brought him to reject nuclear weapons as fundamentally immoral because, even without their use, nuclear deterrence itself depends on a willingness to commit mass murder. As a leading spokesperson for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, Kent became well known as a formidable opponent of Margaret Thatc