Please scroll down to read about the life of Fr Graham Morgan, 1947-2024.
St Michael & All Angels, Bedford Park, has a full team of clergy, including several non-stipendiary (unpaid) priests who combine their posts at St Michael’s with other roles in the community. The vicar of St Michael’s & St Peter’s Acton Green is Father Kevin Morris and the Associate Vicar, with particular responsibility for St Peter’s, is Father Fabrizio Pesce. Our curate is Father Brandon Fletcher-James. Honorary Assistant Priests are Mother Maggie Davidge-Smith and Mother Sarah Lenton. Our subdeacon is Professor Graham Holderness and Anne Mower is our sacristan and lay reader.
The photograph below shows clergy from St Michael’s & St Peter’s with the Bishop-elect of Kensington and other west London clergy in December 2022. Read more.
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Father Kevin Morris, Vicar, St Michael & All Angels, & St Peter’s, Acton Green
Father Kevin became Vicar of St Michael’s on 24th May 1996. He was born and educated in South Wales and later read music in North Wales, studying composition with William Mathias and Jeffrey Lewis. After this he spent a year in Pakistan, working with USPG in Lahore, before theological college in Cambridge. As part of his formation for ordination, Fr Kevin spent some time in Jerusalem, teaching at St George’s College.
Fr Kevin was ordained deacon in 1988 at Llandaff Cathedral and served as curate in the Parish of Roath in Cardiff, with special responsibility for St Philip’s church, Tremorfa, a church on a housing estate on the east side of Cardiff. He was ordained priest in 1989.
In 1991 he moved to London to be curate of St Alban’s, Holborn, an important and influential church in the early history of Anglo-Catholicism. The Vicar was Fr John Gaskell, one of the great preachers and spiritual directors of the day, and under his direction the church became renowned for its music and had a significant ministry to the homeless and people with AIDS. During this time Fr Kevin was also chaplain to three West End Theatres.
Fr Kevin has a passionate concern for how the parish church serves the whole community through its daily worship and service as well as through its buildings. As a result, his time at St Michael’s has been one which has seen a lot of physical changes to the church plant: the Hall has been refurbished, the church repainted (back to its original colours), a new Vestry and Sacristy have been completed and a new organ built.
In addition to being Vicar of St Michael’s and chair of the Bedford Park Festival, Fr Kevin served for 11 years as Director of Post Ordination Training in the Diocese of London, has been the London Diocesan chair of Affirming Catholicism, and is currently the President of Sion College, a London based college for clergy, which was founded in 1630.
Fr Kevin has a deep interest in liturgy, Biblical studies and music and in engaging with contemporary issues with a generous orthodoxy. He is also very interested in the interconnection of Christianity and the Arts and has a particular interest in the theatre and poetry: He is Chaplain to the Tabard Theatre and Chair of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Project.
Fr Kevin was the first incumbent to be married in post, and at St Michael’s, and he and Miriam have two children. In April 2015 he also became the priest-in-charge of the Parish of Acton Green and was made Vicar of St Peter’s Acton Green in May 2016.
Father Fabrizio Pesce, Associate Vicar, St Peter’s Acton Green
Father Fabrizio joined the St Michael’s team in July 2015 with primary responsibility for St Peter’s Acton Green. He was licensed as Assistant Priest in May 2016. He cares deeply about evangelism and making the church the centre of community life. You can read more about St Peter’s on its own website.
He was born and brought up in Southern Italy, in Puglia, and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 2003. His formation for priesthood took place in Argentina where he worked as a missionary priest with the order of Missionaries of St Charles (Scalabrinians) for seven years.
As a recently ordained priest, Fr Fabrizio worked for two years as assistant priest at Madre de los Emigrantes Parish in Buenos Aires and then was appointed as Chaplain of the Italian Community in Buenos Aires. His role entailed many responsibilities in terms of promoting activities, events, seminars, exhibitions and meetings and keeping private as much as public relationships with religious and non-religious Italian associations and diplomatic representatives.
In 2010 Fr Fabrizio left his order and eventually moved to London where he got married to Valeria, and they have two children. He worked as an International Sales Manager in the advertising and online marketing industry for almost three years in London. In 2015 he was received into the Church of England as a priest and began working at St Michael’s and then St Peter’s.
He has a life-time interest in music and loves singing. He likes different genres such as jazz, classic and contemporary Italian music. He loves Italian food as much as International and Fusion cuisine. He is passionate about cinematography and appreciates independent films more than commercial movies. He loves reading, especially studies and literature related to Spirituality, International Migration, History and Politics. He likes practising sports, in particular football and swimming.
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Father Brandon Fletcher-James, Curate
Father Brandon joined the St Michael’s team in July 2022. He was born and raised in Hackney, East London and later read Theology in Durham University. As part of his studies he spent some time on an Erasmus Year abroad studying at Charles University in Prague. Before starting his formational studies, Fr. Brandon spent two years on CEMES (Church of England ministerial experience schemes) with a four-group benefice in Sunderland, and a year working as a Pastoral assistant at St Martin-in-the-Fields. He received ordination training at Westcott House, Cambridge, on a two year course and completed an MA in Theology, Mission and Ministry.
Fr. Brandon has a deep interest in Christology, Liturgy and Eastern Orthodoxy. He is also keen on exploring the intersection between Theology and the Arts particularly in relation to contemporary culture. He loves world cinema, reading literature relating to the fields of postcolonial and liberation theologies and attending local art exhibitions.
Mother Maggie Davidge-Smith, Honorary Assistant Priest
Mother Maggie is a retired hospital chaplain – at Ealing Hospital and Meadow House Hospice and the West Middlesex University Hospital – with permission to Officiate. She also runs a small psychotherapy and supervision practice. She has particular expertise in relation to Gestalt and Transactional Analysis.
Mthr Maggie’s formation for ordination took place on the Southern Theological and Training Scheme (STETS) based in Salisbury and she is was ordained deacon in 2002 and priest in 2003 at St Paul’s Cathedral. Mthr Maggie began her ordained life in non- stipendiary ministry as curate of St Dunstan’s Acton before becoming a hospital chaplain.
She has been associated with St Michael’s for many years and joins us when not working or on call. She is Chair of the Organ Donation Committee at Ealing Hospital.
Graham Holderness, Subdeacon
Graham Holderness joined St Michael’s in 1996, and was appointed Sub-Deacon in 2000. He has a PhD in Literature and Theology, and has published theological research in journals such as Harvard Theological Review, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Literature and Theology, and Renaissance and Reformation. His book Re-writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film(Bloomsbury, 2014), is described by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as ‘in a different class of originality and excellence from anything so far written about the fictional transformations of Jesus’ life’; and the Church Times describes his book The Faith of William Shakespeare (Lion Hudson, 2016) as ‘impressive in its grasp of the verbal and imaginative world of Shakespeare’s audiences, persuasively connecting doctrine with drama’.
Graham enjoyed a long career as lecturer, researcher and senior university manager, has an international reputation as critic, scholar and creative writer, and is now Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hertfordshire, and a freelance writer. He has published four works of fiction: The Prince of Denmark (UH Press 2001), a life of Jesus Ecce Homo(Bloomsbury, 2014), Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare Vampire Hunter (Top Hat Books, 2015) and Meat, Murder, Malfeasance, Medicine and Martyrdom: Smithfield Stories (EER, 2019).
Graham is elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the English Association and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was commissioned Lay Minister at St Michael’s for teaching and preaching in 2020.
Anne Mower, Sacristan and Lay Reader
I have been attending St Michael’s since the Autumn of 1983 when we moved to Acton from Nottinghamshire. For ten years I worked as the administrator at Maples Nursery School in Acton, and then for four years in our parish office as the first administrator. Through these thirty-two years my sons have grown up, I lost my husband, and now have three grandchildren, and all of this sustained by the community at St Michael’s. I have done most things from dusting the pews to serving on the PCC. I have sung in the choir for almost thirty years. In 2006 I became the Sacristan, which means I look after the vestments and all the supplies needed for our worship. I was licensed as a Lay Reader or Lay Minister in 2011 after a three-year training period, so I am now part of the preaching ministry here, and occasionally have the privilege of taking Communion to people who cannot get to church. All this provides me with a deep sense of fulfilment, and has given me a place in a wonderful community of friends.
Former clergy
Father Graham Morgan Kt, Honorary Assistant Priest – 1947-2024
Father Graham was honorary assistant priest at S Michael’s from 2002-2024. He died on September 26th 2024 and his Funeral Mass will be held at 1.30pm on Tuesday November 5th in St Michael & All Angels Church.
Fr Graham’s early life and education was in South Wales where he was trained as a nurse. He received his formation for ordination on the Southwark Ordination course and was ordained deacon at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1983 and priest in 1984 where he combined parish work with his nursing career.
He served as curate at St Stephen’s Gloucester Road, and then from 1990 at Holy Innocents, Hammersmith before coming to St Michael’s.
Sir Graham held the post of Executive Director of Nursing and Quality of the North West London Hospitals NHS Trust from 1995 until his retirement and during 2005 he became the Trust’s Director of Service Improvement and Strategy. He was created a Knight Bachelor in 2000 for services to health care.
He had a long and distinguished history of pioneering service change within the NHS and led the clinical team that developed the first treatment centre in Europe (the Ambulatory Care and Diagnostic Centre). This was recognised as a trail blazer for the entire elective care programme in the UK and his work on redesigning and extending the roles of nurses and therapists within the ACAD was fundamental to its success.
His ministry was shared between the parish and St Margaret’s Convent and St Mary’s Nursing Home of which he was a Trustee.
Fr Graham had a great love of music, especially opera, old films and the musical theatre – and a profound commitment to liturgical theology, spiritual direction and ethics, particularly Christianity in the work place.
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