Ahead of his installation on Saturday 29 November, Bishop Nicholas Hudson speaks to us about his new appointment as Bishop of Plymouth.
The Diocese of Plymouth has been waiting a long time for a bishop. With the installation date fast approaching, Bishop Hudson is looking forward to his new ministry.
His father came from an army family, and when he was very young, the family left India and settled in the West Country. They lived first in Parkstone, Poole, and then in Crownhill, Plymouth. His father was at school in Yelverton, then Clifton.
Reflecting on his appointment, Bishop Hudson said: “I’m very excited. I’m aware that the diocese has been waiting a long time for a bishop and I can’t wait to begin.”
In any diocese you have a spectrum of the generations, all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and places. Asked how he is hoping to relate to the old, the young, and everything in between, Bishop Hudson emphasised his commitment to listening.
“I want to be a listening bishop, and I want to make a real priority of listening from the outset. I want to listen in a special way to the clergy, of course. But I also want to be able to listen to people from across the generations.”
In his former diocese of Westminster, he spent a lot of time with young people, going with them to different parts of the world for World Youth Day, and different pilgrimages. He found it very important just to spend time with them. In Plymouth, he wants to give time to the young people and really to get to know how they see themselves contributing to the life of the Church.
People have always said that Bishop Hudson is a good listener. During the 12 years that he was an auxiliary bishop in Westminster, he had 55 parishes, which took him a while to get to know. His style there was to meet with the key people in each of the parishes, not just the clergy, but also lay people who had particularly significant roles, and to listen to their hopes for the parish and how it could deepen and develop its mission. This will be very much his style in Plymouth. He explained:
“In terms of how one structures it, I think going to deaneries is first. That already gives one different areas of the diocese to begin to get impressions of, and then I’ll need to develop a strategy to see how I can systematically listen to the diocese across the board.”
Asked about the key challenges and opportunities for the Catholic community in this region, Bishop Hudson identified building one diocesan family as a priority:
“I think that the key challenge will be to develop our sense of being one family, one diocesan family across the three counties. But I’m also aware that I am the new one coming into this community and that I’ll need to ask people what it is like to live this reality. What’s it like if you come from Penzance and how do you feel in relation to Poole and what it means to belong to such a huge community? But I do hope that the years that I’m in Plymouth, I’ll be able to build that sense of community along with other people.”
As the Church celebrates the Jubilee Year of Hope, and with the installation just weeks away, what does ‘hope’ mean to Bishop Hudson as he takes up this new role?
“Hope means a lot to me, and I’ve always felt that hope is something that I have deep in my heart. I think all the years I’ve been a priest and a bishop, I’ve always wanted to communicate a sense of hope, and that’s a hope in the Lord himself.
“There’s this wonderful line that St. Paul uses in his letter to Timothy when he says, ‘I know who it is whom I have put my trust in.’ It always strikes me that the words from the Psalm, which I’ve taken for my own motto, which is ‘In Te Domine Speramus’, which is of course ‘In you, Lord, we hope’, is often translated as ‘In you, Lord, we trust’.
“Trust and hope are very close, and as I prepare myself to begin to be the Bishop of Plymouth, I’m looking forward to communicating that dual sense of trust and hope.”
Bishop Hudson is very excited that he is being installed on the feast day of one of the two patron saints of the diocese – St Cuthbert Mayne. The feast day of the other patron saint, St Boniface, is celebrated on 5 June.
Bishop Hudson also spoke warmly about St Carlo Acutis, who was canonised earlier this year:
“I think the time that I’m in Plymouth, people will often hear me talking about St. Carlo Acutis. I think he’s a saint for all of us and in a special way for children and young people.
“I will be asking his intercession, newly canonised as he is, his intercession along with our patron saints for the Diocese of Plymouth.”
Bishop Nicholas Hudson will be installed Bishop of Plymouth in the city’s Cathedral Church of St Mary and St Boniface on Saturday 29 November 2025.
For more information about the Diocese of Plymouth, visit plymouth-diocese.org.uk.
