Brief Summary of Scottish Catholic History

As we celebrate the Jubilee Year 2025, the Scottish Catholic Heritage Commission invites us to look back at the story of the Faith in our country, so far:

The first name we have in our story is Saint Ninian of Galloway. He was consecrated Bishop for Scotland in Rome in 394 by Pope Saint Siricius. He made his base at Whithorn. After him came Saint Mungo, first Bishop of Glasgow, born in 518, and Saint Columba came from Donegal in 563. These are the three great pioneers of our Scottish Catholic story. They were followed by a succession of holy men and women building on their work. Saint Margaret, who married King Malcolm Canmore in 1070, strengthened the links between Scotland and Rome and encouraged the monastic orders to come to Scotland, policies continued by her son, Saint David, King of Scots, and many of his successors. Our land is dotted with evocative monastic ruins such as at Melrose, a Cistercian foundation. The orders of canons and friars also came to Scotland and the latter are still remembered in street names like Whitefriars (Carmelites), Blackfriars (Dominicans),

Greyfriars (Franciscans).

The Declaration of Arbroath, in 1320, appealed to the Pope to recognise Scotland as a separate nation. Several popes confirmed Scottish Nationhood in the years that followed. Earlier, about 1175, Bishop Jocelin acquired for Glasgow the title Specialis Filia Romanae Ecclesiae (Special Daughter of the Roman Church). This title was extended to the whole of Scotland later and reiterated by Pope Saint John Paul II on his visit in 1982, at the biggest gathering of Scots in our nation’s history when 300,000 celebrated Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. The Vatican is one of the few international bodies which respects the distinctiveness of Scotland, recognising, for example, our own Bishops’ Conference, independent from England and Wales.

The Reformation Parliament of 1560 marked the most serious rupture in the story of Scotland. It forbade the celebration of Mass in Scotland; priests were not allowed to be in the country at all; parents were forbidden to pass on the Faith to their children; pilgrimages to holy places were banned. A whole way of life that had united the country was swept aside almost overnight and those who wished to remain faithful to the Mass and the Pope continued to practice their faith secretly, running the risk of severe penalties. One figure standing out from that time is Saint John Ogilvie, Jesuit priest and martyr, who was put to death in Glasgow in 1615 for upholding the authority of the Pope to lead us in matters of Faith. He had been trained on the continent of Europe. Several colleges were set up there, in Rome, Spain, France and Bavaria to provide priests for Scotland. Still today we have two seminaries abroad: the Pontifical Scots College, Rome, and the Royal Scots College, Salamanca. 

In time, with considerable courage, colleges were established secretly in Scotland, in remote locations and under primitive conditions, Loch Morar in the West Highlands and Scalan in the Braes of Glenlivet being the best known. Both suffered at the hands of government soldiers after the Jacobite uprisings. Our support for these probably held us back half a century in re-gaining our freedoms. Another feature of those times was a small but resilient Catholic aristocracy whose houses, like Traquair near Innerleithen, supported local Catholics and were refuges for travelling priests. In freer times some of them financed the building of new churches. 

Eventually we regained most of our freedoms in the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Gradually the Church began to grow again, strengthened by immigration from Ireland which has been added to since with large numbers from Italy, Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, India and other countries as well as movement within Scotland from the country to the towns and cities.

Six dioceses were set up in 1878, the first act of Pope Leo XIII and, with huge expansion between the two World Wars, two further dioceses, Motherwell and Paisley, were erected in 1947. Education has been a recurring theme throughout the centuries. The Church established the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen in the 15th century. In the days of persecution, it was always difficult to finance teachers and resources. In the 1800s, religious orders of men and women started Catholic schools, often coupled with combatting poverty. They were helped in this by groups run by ordinary Catholics such as the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul which was founded in Paris in 1833 and was established in Edinburgh in 1845. In 1872, the government obliged parents to send their children to school, but these were places where the presbyterian faith would be taught, so Catholic parents wanted schools of their own. Central Government subsidised these, but local government would only support their own schools, so Catholics schools suffered a lack of resources and the loss of teachers who could not bring up their own families on the meagre wages. By means of the Education Act of 1918, some people in government who had the spirit of being public servants, recognised that this was unjust, and arranged to have the Catholic schools brought into the state system while genuinely providing safeguards for the continued teaching of the Catholic Faith within them. This points to one aspect of our story we should never forget – how we were often helped from the most unlikely of quarters as people of other faiths helped us with land, property and finance, out of a sense of decency and a desire to create a more harmonious society.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) introduced major changes in the life of the Catholic community: the Mass began to be celebrated in our own language, not Latin, and a greater participation in it was encouraged by all present; a new word appeared: Ecumenism. Catholics were encouraged to forgive the past, and to forge new and strong ties with our “separated brethren” in the other Christian Churches; similar relations were to be fostered with believers of other religions; a fresher image of the Church was presented as the People of God on pilgrimage together through this life playing an active part in the wider society whose “joys and hopes, fears and anxieties” are often ours too, in this way building up the Kingdom of Christ on this earth. All of these new approaches would help us to answer the call from God to everyone of us to be holy, for you and I to be “the saints of the 21st century” as Pope Benedict encouraged our young people to be during his visit in 2010.