St George's Cathedral, Southwark

]] St George's was built in 1848, when it was opened by Bishop (later Cardinal) Wiseman. Previously, the local Catholic community had used a small chapel on London Road, also dedicated to St George, but the arrival of Irish immigrants in the area necessitated the construction of a larger house of worship. In 1852, following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, it became one of the first four Catholic churches in England and Wales (and the first in London) raised to cathedral status since the English Reformation. It was designed by Augustus Pugin, famous for his work with Charles Barry on the design of the rebuilt Houses of Parliament, in decorated Gothic, from yellow stock brick with…

Before the wartime damage, there were two organs, one by Willis and one by Bishop & Son. Both were destroyed. They were replaced by a 72 stop John Compton organ in 1958. The Compton organ has since been modified by both Ellis Scothon and by Whitwell Green. Easter 2011 saw the partial restoration of the Compton organ and the installation in the chancel of the George Pace Choir Stalls, a gift from the Anglican St Alban's Cathedral. The cathedral has strong links with both the Paderborn Cathedral, North Rhine-Westphalia, which suffered bombing by the British in the Second World War, and Southwark Cathedral, the local Anglican cathedral. The stained glass in the bombed cathedral was by the…

The cathedral is a working church for the community. For example, the Latin American community is served with a Spanish Mass every Sunday at 1pm, celebrated entirely in the Spanish language. Every Mass is attended by people of different ethnicities and ages, ranging from African to Asian to European. The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales have made several visits to the cathedral to celebrate both Low Mass and Solemn High Mass in the usus antiquior (older use) that Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) authorised as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite (the 1962 version of the Tridentine Mass). The cathedral is located on a historic site next to Wellington…