Holy moly! Confessions of a young priest

Aged just 31, Reverend FERGUS BUTLER-GALLIE is no regular cleric. Maddy Fletcher takes a pew while he talks house blessings and spliff-scented funerals

When Fergus Butler-gallie was 20 years old, he told his parents he wanted to become a priest. Both were a little confused. His father was ex-army, his mother was a doctor, and the family wasn’t religious. Still, they were supportive – in their own fashion. ‘In many ways it’s not so different from the Army,’ said his dad. ‘The outfit’s stupid and the pay’s crap.’

Now, aged 31, Rev Fergus Butler-gallie has been an ordained member of the Church of England for almost five years. He’s worked in churches in South Africa and Salford, London and Liverpool. This month he has published his memoir, Touching Cloth: Confessions and Communions of a Young Priest.

Place the emphasis on ‘young’. When ordained in 2018 he was 26 – the average age of becoming a priest then was 52. What was it like as a 20-something vicar? After Butler-gallie’s ordination, he was plonked in a parish in Liverpool, in a flat attached to his church. The free digs were handy: most priests start on around £23,000 a year, and the average vicar earns £28,000. His dad was right about the pay.

The day-to-day tasks of a clergyman are varied. In his first year, Butler-gallie navigated tricky weddings: advising couples against using their dog as a ring bearer; warning grooms that, while the custom-made group T-shirts were doubtless hilarious for the stag do, they might not be quite right for the ushers to wear in church. He presided over even trickier funerals: at a service in North Liverpool, a man on the street started smoking a spliff directly outside the room’s only open window, inadvertently hotboxing the whole ceremony.

Then there are the ghosts. Lots of churchgoers in Britain, it turns out, are worried about the supernatural – so much so that the C of E keeps an exorcist in every diocese. They’re highly trained clergy, often with degrees in psychology, called ‘diocesan deliverance ministers’.

Butler-gallie has never had to perform a full-throttle exorcism, but he has been asked to do lots of ‘house blessings’. It’s a fairly straightforward procedure: a priest wanders through someone’s new home, blessing each room with prayers and sprinklings of holy water to ward off misfortune (as well as potential ghouls). But it has its snags: once, one of Butler-gallie’s colleagues arrived and realised he had forgotten to bring holy water with him. He was on his way to a party and had some gin, which he blessed hastily and used instead.

What else? Dog collars are pricey (£25) and the plastic ones are as uncomfortable as they look. (‘It’s like you’ve been to the vet’s.’) Once you’ve got the collar on, people treat you differently. Butler-gallie remembers seeing a commuter at a train station struggling to get his pass to work. The man grumbled ‘F**k, f**king f**k’ at the ticket barrier, then turned around and spotted Butler-gallie in his garb. He froze and rephrased the utterance: ‘Erm, I mean, erm… s**t.’

This is a strange time to be part of the C of E. Last November, census data revealed that England and Wales are now minority Christian countries for the first time since records began: 46.2 per cent of the population of England and Wales say they are Christian; down from 59.3 per cent in 2011. Meanwhile, 37.2 per cent said they had ‘no religion’; in 2011 it was 25.2 per cent.

For young people, it’s stranger still. In the year of Butler-gallie’s ordination, only two per cent of Britons aged 18 to 24 identified with the C of E. The Guardian even ran a panicked headline: ‘Church in crisis.’

Yet, once a priest, Butler-gallie noticed that friends his age were ‘more inclined to open up about stuff. People confide in you – the things and troubles they have – in a way they probably wouldn’t do to just anybody.’ In the book, he recalls meeting a boy at a party, having a cigarette outside. When Butler-gallie revealed he was a vicar, he braced himself for a ‘lewd joke’ or ‘some sneering teenage atheism’, but the partygoer just spoke and spoke, unburdening his emotions. So maybe young people need the odd priest at a party, ready to listen to worries. As Butler-gallie says, ‘The fundamental needs a church addresses don’t go away.’

What is it the church addresses? ‘To point to the idea that our failings can be reconciled and that we are looked on in love, I suppose,’ he says, choosing his words thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I think that’s what we are. And I don’t think that need will ever go away.’

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND KEEPS A TRAINED EXORCIST IN EVERY DIOCESE

Touching Cloth by the Reverend Fergus Butler-gallie is published by Bantam, £16.99*