St Benet’s is very pleased to announce that a new member of our clergy staff will be joining us this summer to work in our parish. Nigel Palmer will be ordained in June of this year to the diaconate, and will serve as a non-stipendiary assistant curate in our parish for at least three years. He will then, God willing, be ordained to the priesthood in the summer of 2018. Nigel retired in as a lawyer in 2012, and in the time since then has discerned a vocation to ordained ministry. He has been preparing for ordination at St Stephen’s House, Oxford.
His coming to St Benet’s is a great sign of confidence in our parish’s life and witness on the part of the Bishop of Fulham, and a tremendous opportunity for us as we benefit from the gifts and talents Nigel will bring to us.
Fr Peter and Nigel have known each other since 2012, when Nigel commenced his B.A. studies in Theology at St Stephen’s House (where Fr Peter was Junior Dean) in Oxford. Nigel has had a long and varied career, having originally studied English at Oxford, taught in India, worked at Bush House for the BBC, and, finally, enjoyed a long career in the glittering world of film and television as a solicitor in private practice. He knows Kentish Town of old, having lived as a penurious trainee solicitor in the back bedroom of friends who lived at that time at the top end of Patshull Road, and remembers coming to Mass occasionally at St Benet’s. He now lives in Greenwich, where, apart from spending time with lots of friends, he enjoys reading, cooking, listening to lots of music, swimming, walking, singing and playing the harpsichord. He is looking forward immensely to playing his part in the team at St Benet’s.