Heaton Park, Manchester
Mass and ordinations
9am, Monday, 31 May 1982

Three quarters of an hour before Mass on the Monday morning, Pope John Paul II met the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits at the Convent of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth in Manchester.

He then travelled to Heaton Park where he ordained twelve men to the priesthood in front of a crowd of more than 200,000 people.

During his sermon Pope John Paul had a message for the newly ordained: “You must be men of God, his close friends. You must develop daily patterns of prayer, and penance must be a regular part of your life.”

Listening to those words was 24-year-old Tom Neylon – one of the 12 ordinates. Fr Tom remembers thinking the pontiff’s punishing schedule had taken its toll:

“My perception of him beforehand was of a man who was very able to communicate to large groups of people and when he arrived at the altar he seemed to be very tired. I was quite shocked…But it was the forth day of a very heavy schedule and this after the attempt on his life the year before. [However] when he came to celebrate the Mass he seemed to be totally devoted and energised for that period of time, and gave everything he’d got into the celebration.”

Click here to listen to Fr Tom Neylon

Fr Tom may have been in the thick of things in front of a fifth of a million people crammed into Heaton Park but one young man decided to bend the rules to get a good vantage point.

Edmund Adamus, then 17, was six months short of qualifying to become a steward at the event. However, he tried his luck and ended up on the front line:

“My ‘shift’ began at 4pm on the 30 May and despite the freezing cold all through the night and the searing heat throughout the next morning, it never occurred to me at the time that I had been on my feet for over 18 hours!”

“When I finally got home, I almost collapsed from the heat and exhaustion. However, the grace of the Mass was a truly inspirational experience and one which was a significant step in my own discernment to offer myself for priestly formation in the diocese of Salford, in 1983.”

Edmund Adamus is now Director of Pastoral Affairs for the Archdiocese of Westminster.

Click here to listen to Edmund Adamus

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