Father Alan Stephen Hopes, a convert to Catholicism, has been vicar general of the archdiocese headed by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
Bishop-elect Hopes was born in Oxford in 1944. After receiving a bachelor of divinity from King’s College in London, he was ordained an Anglican priest in 1968. He did parish work in several dioceses of London, and in 1987 became prebendary (canon) of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
He was received into the Catholic Church in 1992 and, following three years of study, was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Westminster on Dec. 4, 1995.
After two years as vicar in the parish of Our Lady of Victories in Kensington, he was appointed parish priest of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More Church in Chelsea. He became vicar general of the archdiocese in 2001.
Hopes left the Church of England after it approved the ordination of women to the priesthood.
