Maurice Noël Léon Couve de Murville

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Maurice Noël Léon Couve de Murville

Denomination	Catholic Church
Senior posting
See	Birmingham
Title	Archbishop of Birmingham
Period in office	25 March 1982 — 12 June 1999
Predecessor	George Patrick Dwyer
Successor	Vincent Gerard Nichols
Personal
Date of birth	27 June 1929
Place of birth	St Germain-en-Laye, France
Date of death	3 November 2007
Place of death	Littlehampton, West Sussex

Styles of Maurice Noël Léon Couve de Murville
Reference style	The Most Reverend
Spoken style	Your Grace
Religious style	Archbishop
Posthumous style

Maurice Noël Léon Couve de Murville (27 June 1929 – 3 November 2007) was the seventh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham from 25 March 1982 until his retirement on 12 June 1999, having formerly been a priest of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.

Contents 1 Early career and priesthood 2 Archbishop of Birmingham, 1982–99 3 Later life 4 References

[edit] Early career and priesthood

Couve de Murville was born in St Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris, into a distinguished French family originally from Mauritius. He was a cousin and namesake of Maurice Couve de Murville (1907-1999), a French politician in the Huguenot branch of the family, who served as Foreign Minister (1958-1968) and briefly Prime Minister under General de Gaulle. In 1936, his father took him from France along with his mother and twin brothers to settle at Leatherhead in Surrey, at the age of 7. His mother died in 1945 in England. She was buried alongside other Souchon family members in Effingham, Surrey.

He was educated by Benedictines at Downside School near Bath, and read history at Trinity College, Cambridge (MA). He studied at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, and earned his STL from the Institut Catholique in Paris. He was influenced by the worker-priest movement in France, and became life-long friends with Jean-Marie Lustiger, future Cardinal Archbishop of Paris.

He was ordained a priest on the Feast of SS Peter and Paul on 29 June 1957, for the Diocese of Southwark, by Bishop Cowderoy. His first appointment was as curate at St Anselm's, Dartford (1957-60), and as curate at St Joseph's, Brighton (1960-61). He later served as Priest-in-Charge at St Francis, Moulescoomb (1961-64). In 1961, he was also appointed as chaplain at the University of Sussex. He established a Catholic chaplaincy in Brighton in 1964, called Howard House.

He received an MPhil in Assyro-Babylonian studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1975, and moved to Cambridge in 1977, when he was appointed chaplain at Cambridge University, based at Fisher House. He remained in Cambridge until the surprise announcement from the Holy See on 22 January 1982 that he was to succeed Archbishop George Patrick Dwyer as Archbishop of Birmingham, the third most senior post in the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales. He was ordained as Archbishop at St Chad's Metropolitan Cathedral on the Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1982.

[edit] Archbishop of Birmingham, 1982–99

One of his first duties was to welcome Pope John Paul II at Coventry Airport on Pentecost Sunday, 30 May 1982, the third day of the Pope's Pastoral Visit to Great Britain.

He was particularly involved in developing religious education of the laity in his Archdiocese, and helped to establish the Maryvale Institute, near Birmingham, as an international Catholic College for Theology, Religious Education and Catechesis. Cardinal Newman established the English Congregation of the Oratory at Maryvale on 1 February 1848. With validation from the Pontifical University, Maynooth and the Open University, it now offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degree programmes.

He was Chairman of the Governing Body of the Newman College of Higher Education (now Newman University College) in Birmingham. In 2007, it was announced that Newman College would become a University College and obtain degree-awarding powers. He fostered ties between Oscott and the Catholic University of Louvain, and established links with Birmingham University.

Archbishop Maurice was a member of the Friends of Cardinal Newman, and supported the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory in the Cause for his beatification and canonisation of their founder, the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman.

The last years of his episcopate were tarnished by a series of paedophile scandals involving priests in his archdiocese, including in particular Samuel Penney and Eric Taylor. In 1999, following a prostate operation, he submitted his resignation to the Pope, who permitted him to retire five years early, on health grounds.

[edit] Later life

In retirement, he returned to Sussex and lived in Horsham. He was an enthusiastic Principal Chaplain of the British Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (1987-1991, 2001-2007) and knighted by The Duke of Castro in 1994 as Ecclesiastical Knight Grand Cross of Grace in the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. He became an Honorary Doctor of Divinity at Birmingham University in 1996.

He presided at Mass in St Chad's Cathedral for the last time on 26 March 2007, on the 25th anniversary of his Episcopal Ordination, with Bishops Pargeter, McGough and Kenney as concelebrants.

He had a number of publications to his credit. A few months before his death, he finished a translation of Jean Charbonnier's comprehensive history of the Catholic Church in China.^[1] He had battled prostate cancer several years before. His first signs of slowing down came with a hip replacement in November 2006. However, he remained active with his much loved pursuits of walking and gardening. In October 2007, before embarking on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was admitted to hospital and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which was recognised as terminal.

On 3 November 2007, aged 78, he died a peaceful death at St Joseph's Nursing Home in Littlehampton, West Sussex.^[2] A Funeral Mass was held at St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham on 21 November 2007.^[3]

[edit] References

• Obituary, The Times, November 5, 2007
• Obituary, The Guardian, November 8, 2007
• Obituary, The Telegraph, November 7, 2007
• Catholic Hierarchy

Preceded by George Patrick Dwyer

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham 1982-1999

Succeeded by Vincent Gerard Nichols