The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament
In its recent Annual Report and Accounts, the UK Charities Commission reported that over the last 12 months, it had opened 15 statutory inquiries "of regulatory concern in charities".
One such inquiry involved The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament.
The Confraternity, a charity that promotes the "advancement of the Catholic faith in the Anglican Tradition", made a grant of £1m to The Ordinate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a Catholic organisation established in 2011 to "support Anglican priests converting to Roman Catholicism."
Members of the charity, public and media raised concerns with the Commission about the grant, which constituted almost half of the Confraternity's assets.
Two issues came before the Commission.
Firstly the Commission had to consider whether the grant had been validly made. On this point, the Commission found the decision to make the grant to be "invalid" by virtue of "the majority of the trustees having a (financial) personal interest in the decision". In fact, five of the six trustees of the Confraternity had been ordained in the Ordinate as Catholic priests.
The second issue the Commission considered was whether the grant fell within the objects of the Confraternity. On this point the Commission found that the grant was not "wholly within the objects of the Confraternity" as the grant was not for purposes connected with the "Anglican Tradition".
Consequentially, the Ordinate repaid the £1m grant to the Confraternity.
In its 2012-2013 Annual Report the Commission contended that this case "demonstrated" their "expert understanding of Christian worship as it relates to charity law."
Click here to read the Commission's decision.
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