The
Catholic Herald was established as a weekly newspaper in 1888. It was first owned and edited by
Irish Derry-born
Charles Diamond, a journalist and newspaper entrepreneur, until his death in 1934. In 1920, Diamond edited the
Herald from jail after writing an editorial leader article that supported Irish nationalism and allegedly encouraged assassination in Ireland. After his death the paper was bought by Ernest Vernor Miles, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism and head of the New Catholic Herald Ltd. Miles appointed Count
Michael de la Bédoyère as editor, a post he held until 1962. From 1888 to 1962, the
Herald only had two editors and was based for many years in a large building on the corner of
Whitefriars Street and
Fleet Street opposite
The Daily Telegraph building and close to its rival newspaper,
The Universe. During his time as editor, he transformed it into a much respected intellectual newspaper, which often brought it into conflict with the more conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church. Circulation increased to over 100,000. During the late 1930s, owner Vernor Miles published a number of articles, like
Viscount Rothermere in the
Daily Mail, which displayed some moral ambivalence towards the rise of fascism in Europe. The
Herald, however, condemned
Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts’ street fights, anti-Semitism and worship of State power over God. De la Bédoyère's news editor was writer
Douglas Hyde, also a convert who arrived from the Communist
Daily Worker. After resigning from the party in 1948, he converted to Catholicism. After his conversion, he gained an international reputation in the late 1940s and 1950s as a critic of communism. De la Bédoyère almost went to prison for criticising what he saw as
Churchill's appeasement of the "godless" Soviet Union. In the 1980s, when Peter Stanford became the editor, the publication openly supported left-wing politics in South America. Fisher had grown up in
Derry in the 1920s, during
The Troubles that led to partition in 1922. After graduating from
University College Dublin, where he was a classicist, he moved to London in 1952 to become London editor of
The Irish Press. Fisher’s reporting of the Second Vatican Council was said to be so incisive that
Cardinal Franz König of
Vienna said he learned more from reading Mr Fisher’s reports than from being there.
Desmond Albrow followed Fisher as editor during the later sessions of Vatican II. Writing in an editorial in 1968, entitled ‘Publish and be Banned’ (30 August 1968), following the publication of the
Pope Paul VI’s encyclical
Humanae Vitae, Albrow voiced the views of many Catholics in Britain, and elsewhere, after the encyclical letter condemned the use of artificial contraception – a papal missive which a
Herald editorial stated was "a Roman time-bomb: a theological and pastoral blockbuster". Albrow was also the editor responsible for bringing the paper’s celebrated 1960s cartoonist
John Ryan into the
Herald which began ‘what was to become an entertaining visual chronicle of the post Vatican II Catholic church’. Ryan had attended
Ampleforth and was able to speak to ordinary Catholics as he had been educated in the liturgical practice of the pre-Vatican II church in which his audience had also been raised. Ryan's cartoons gently mocked the clergy and curia of Rome and his work became an integral part of the
Heralds weekly news coverage of church affairs as Ryan ‘lived and breathed his subject’. From the 1970s to the 1980s, the
Heralds commercial survival was partly due to the tight budgeting of the
Heralds pipe smoking managing director,
Austrian Otto Herschan. He was first appointed as managing director in 1961 by Vernor Miles. Herschan’s sense of economy ensured that editorial costs were controlled through forensic accounting and a distaste for any unnecessary spending, down to questioning the cost of interval ice-creams for the theatre critic. His memoir,
Holy Smoke?, revealed that his speciality as managing director was to invite Catholic grandees to write for negligible sums. Writers such as
Delia Smith would be paid by being taken to lunch at the RAC Club. Albrow was followed by aristocratic journalist
Gerard Noel, author of 20 books, who had met with
Pope Pius XII at the
Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo in 1947. He had two stints as editor, from 1971 to 1974, and then 1982 to 1983. Stuart Reid, later deputy editor of
The Spectator, edited the paper briefly in 1975, to be succeeded by
Richard Dowden. Dowden was followed by
Terence Sheehy (1983–1988). Educated by Jesuits in London and Dublin, Sheehy was appointed as a 'caretaker' editor in 1983 after working for
The Irish Catholic in Dublin from 1942 to 1946. Sheehy did not step into the doctrinal and liturgical wars that were dividing the church in the 1980s as he set out a populist agenda for the paper to help its commercial interests. Employing young journalists straight from university, he steered a middle course at a time when Catholicism was starting to divide into factions as
Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, clashed with more progressive elements of the church. For a traditionalist, Terry surprised readers by not censoring the voices of divorced, gay and progressive Catholics to be aired. He reported the various scandals that emanated from the Vatican and vigorously resisted censorship from cardinals, bishops and papal nuncios for a more 'deferential' line Terry always insisted that the
Herald needed to remain a strong independent voice in the church. An example was his campaign to encourage the Vatican to give their blessing to the Marian shrine at
Medjugorje, in former
Yugoslavia. Although when the
Bishop of Mostar was opposed to the reports of the six visionaries, Terry published articles and reports from the pilgrims who had their own experiences there. In the end, the
Herald influenced the Vatican to revisit their views in a more favourable way on the visions. In 1988, when
Peter Stanford became the editor, the publication openly supported left-wing politics in
South America. He was editor from 1988 to 1992 and resigned, to concentrate on writing books.
Cristina Odone edited The
Catholic Herald from 1992 to 1995. Odone was an Italian-American journalist, educated at
Marymount School and
Oxford University. She clashed with Otto Herschan, by then also chairman and
Herald shareholder, who was largely liberal in his church politics. Herschan first fell out with columnist
Alice Thomas Ellis, an orthodox Catholic of traditional persuasion, after she wrote a piece condemning the late
Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Rev
Derek Worlock. The saga helped to end the editorship of Odone, whose resignation letter was printed on the front page of the
Catholic Herald. Odone was followed in the editor's chair in October 1996 by Deborah Jones, a former teacher, who once considered becoming a nun. Although Jones did not apply for the editor's position, chairman Otto Herschan sought her appointment as the board wanted to ensure that the newspaper's coverage was uncontroversial. Jones was a liberal Catholic, described as an ‘ardent supporter of the modern church reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s'. She lasted two years before being replaced by William Oddie. Stephen Bates of
The Guardian says that in the later 1990s and early 2000s under editor Oddie, the
Herald moved in a different direction to the right and published criticism of liberal bishops and Jesuits. Oddie was appointed as editor in 1998 at a time when
Conrad Black, also owner of
The Daily Telegraph and
Jerusalem Post, owned a 47% stake in the
Herald whilst a similar stake was held by hotelier
Sir Rocco Forte and the remaining 5% by chairman Peter Sheppard. There were controversies under Oddie's editorship. Columnist Father
David Torkington resigned in 1999, saying that the
Herald was “lurching to the Right” ever since the passing of
Cardinal Hume, who had been “a stabilising influence” on the newspaper. Oddie resigned from the editorship in 2004. Oddie was replaced by editor
Luke Coppen, who was appointed in his late twenties. Coppen introduced a re-design along with a fresh editorial policy designed to ‘see off the increasingly conservative competition for good’. A US print edition of the
Catholic Herald was launched on 16 November 2018 with board members, led by Sir Rocco Forte, travelling to Washington and New York for various launch events attended by leading Catholics in America. The
New York Post reported how ‘Conservative British Catholics came to New York’ and attended various events organised by
Constance Watson, great-granddaughter of Evelyn Waugh. The US edition was closed during the
COVID-19 pandemic after churches closed and editor-in-chief
Damian Thompson resigned due to differences over the U.S. edition's editorial direction. The
Catholic Herald closed its Washington, D.C. offices in March 2020 as a result of US churches being closed during the pandemic. The
Herald board decided to re-invent itself as a monthly magazine of global influence, taking advantage of digital subscription opportunities and focus on investment and growth in America. When Coppen stepped down after 14 successful years, he was replaced by Dan Hitchens, formerly Deputy editor. Shortly after Dan Hitchens took on the position as editor in 2020, the newspaper revealed that it would be publishing on a monthly basis, a change from its previous weekly format. Hitchens stated that the change would provide the newspaper with the opportunity to expand its scope and publish more material online. In April 2020, with the churches closing and lockdown announced in the UK because of Covid-19 pandemic, the US weekly print edition was merged into the UK print edition to create an international magazine. The
Scottish Catholic Observer, Britain's oldest religious newspaper founded in 1885, is also owned by the
Catholic Herald. The title was mothballed during the pandemic due to the closure of all Scottish Catholic churches. Hitchens was replaced by William Cash in January 2021. Cash was chairman from 2018 to February 2023 and has been editor-in-chief since January 2021. He is a two time winner of ‘Editor of the year’ at the PPA Independent Publisher Awards (2007 and 2008) as well as winning Writer of the Year in 2022 for his
Catholic Herald work. In January 2023, the
Daily Telegraph wrote: "The
Catholic Herald is riding high after it was shortlisted for Consumer Publication of the Year at the 2022 PPA Independent Publisher Awards. Now it is expanding to find a new audience in the US, described as the “political and moral battleground of the Catholic church". In March 2023, a 50.1% shareholding of the
Catholic Herald was sold to New York based GEM Global Yield LLC SCS (Luxembourg), an alternative investment private equity group with offices in Paris, New York, and The Bahamas, with the chairmanship of the
Herald passing to GEM founder Chris Brown whilst Cash remained editor-in-chief, director and shareholder. along with its UK Catholic Leaders of Today. The magazine was nominated for Editor of the Year (Consumer Magazine) at the 2021 PPA Independent Publisher Awards, with cover artist Adam Dant nominated for Cover of the Year, as well as for Launch of the Year for which the
Herald was awarded runner up. In 2022, the
Herald was nominated for Magazine of the Year and Writer of the Year and won for Writer of the Year (William Cash) at a ceremony in the City of London on 25 November. At the 2023 PPA awards, Cash was nominated for Editor of the Year (Consumer Media) and also for Writer of the Year, for articles that included a report from Ukraine at the start of the war and coverage of various pilgrimages. “To be shortlisted in a line-up that includes the publishers Hearst, Bauer Media, Condé Nast, the BBC, Future and Haymarket shows how the
Herald has evolved into a world-leading media brand,” Cash said. “The nominations are very much a team effort and reflect the exceptional calibre of our editorial staff.” ==Editors==