Spiritual Conferences

Tony Philpot was born in Croydon in 1935. His family moved to Bedford and he was educated at Bedford School before training for the priesthood at the Venerable English College, Rome. Returning to his home diocese, Northampton, he served in St Joseph's, Bedford, and Northampton Cathedral before being appointed Parish Priest of Leighton Buzzard. For the rest of his life he served in parishes that were later to become the newly formed Diocese of East Anglia: in Ipswich, Newmarket and then, for fourteen years, in Our Lady of the English Martyrs, Cambridge. In East Anglia he took charge of religious education, before being appointed one of the Diocese's Vicars General, and also had responsibility for the 'Ministry to Priests' programme. Appointed director of Palazzola, a place of prayer and hospitality outside Rome, used by the students of the English College and many pilgrims, he then served as Spiritual Director of the Venerable English College for five years from 2001. After an interval ministering to the Portuguese community in Peterborough, there was one more spell as a seminary spiritual director (once again in Rome, but this time for the Beda College) before he retired to London. Mgr Tony Philpot died in 2016. Two previous collections of his spiritual conferences have previously been published as Priesthood in Reality and You shall be Holy.