Just a quick question... we arrive in London Sunday morning and we would like to attend Mass. Is there a Catholic Church near Russell Square?

thanks,
Sunny

Hi Sunny,
I googled - Catholic Churches - Russell Square - London, England - and got a nice list of several churches. Good luck! Have a safe trip.
Mary Ann

For a complete visual listing, go to www.rcdow.org.uk/virtual/

The university chaplaincy (Gower St WC1E 6AR) is the nearest. Since church music is one of the things London leads the world in, and a depressing proportion of England's Catholic churches really don't try hard enough, you might wish to take this opportunity to patronise one of the few that give the Anglicans (and the Orthodox, and the Charismatics) a run for their money.

Reasonably nearby, you'll find:

St Cecilia's, Kingsway, WC2A 3JA
St James, Spanish Place, W1U 3QY
St Etheldreda's, Ely Place, EC1N 6RY

Like many of the major churches in central London, these three all chant their main Sunday Mass in Latin.

St Anselm's in Kingsway just next to Holborn tube is a nice old church and gets a good congregation (mainly jam roll live in hotel and restaurant staff).

St Anselm's is the same church as St Cecilia's.

Musical romantics call it St Cecilia's because she's the patron saint of music. Nationalist romantics call it St Anselm's because he was archbishop of Canterbury.

St James Spanish Place has a parish priest (plus his curate) who is an ex-Anglican (former administrator at Anglican Walsingham Shrine and Vicar of St Stephen's Gloucester Rd, where TS Eliot was once a churchwarden), and the liturgy is traditional (extraordinary form - Tridentine) with a professional choir.
http://www.sjrcc.org.uk/page3/choirandmusic.html
Get there early as the church is packed!

St Anselm's is the same church as St Cecilia's.>>>>

I did wonder why I'd never heard of St Cecilia's. I used to work in Parker St nearby (in my bleeding heart years).

It does say St Anselm's on the sign outside I'm sure.

(BTW when the god-bothering has finished The Ship behind the station is a nice old pub and does decent grub. All RC churches are near a decent pub. It's another reason we're better than those right footed bastards).

If you want to eat spendy but lush nosh then Great Queen Street in, well, Great Queen Street is ever so good for sunday lunch. It's opposite the world headquarters of Freemasonry so catholics should feel right at home.

"All RC churches are near a decent pub. It's another reason we're better than those right footed bastards"

5/10.

All RC <b> city </b> churches are near a decent pub. Well, obviously. English urban Catholicism used to be the Irish at prayer, until the Poles turned up. What pub owner could resist locations like that?

In the countryside, the Catholic church is a converted container out by the overspill carpark, with a burger van (open Mon-Sat only) next door. The Prod one (nicked from us 500 years ago) is always next door to the Dog & Duck, and it's always a Dog & Duck that looks after its beer properly.

Which is why we want our churches back. The Prods can keep all that Perpendicular carving, and they smashed up all the paintings and statues anyway: it's the distance from a decent pint that pisses most of us off.

Here's St. Anselm's website http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=S...&setLang=en-CA

I'll try The Ship next trip.

The Ship is busy on weekday evenings - its crammed with barristers as it's next to Lincoln's Inn (one of the Inns of Court).