The Ancient Catholic Church (of Clapton)

I've long been interested in African Independent Churches, and have been collecting information about them in a database, but European Independent Churches can be just as interesting.

For those interested in the byways of ecclesiastical history, someone posted on a Usenet newsgroup a reference to the chancery case of Kings v Bultitude, which contains the fascinating story of the Ancient Catholic Church (of Clapton), which died with its priestess.

Kings v Bultitude & Anor [2010] EWHC 1795 (Ch) (15 July 2010):

The Church was founded by one Harold Nicholson. By the 1940s there were several movements, schismatic from Rome, some of which were comprised in the Catholic Apostolic Church, known as the Catholicate of the West.

Mr Nicholson had begun a house church movement in Clapton in the 1930s, moved to Thornton Heath and in 1943 was ordained a priest into the Catholic Apostolic Church.

After the Second World War Mr Nicholson's movement acquired a bomb-damaged former Baptist Chapel in Lower Sloane Street Chelsea, restored it in a high Catholic tradition and opened it as the Church of the Good Shepherd in 1947. In 1949, Mr Nicholson resigned from the ministry of the Catholicate of the West, although he maintained close links with the Patriarch. On 27th May 1950, at a service in Chelsea, the Patriarch issued a charter to the Church, creating it as an independent and autocephalus tropus of the Catholicate of the West and consecrating Nicholson as its first Primate.

The Church left the Catholicate of the West in about 1955, shortly before the Catholicate itself was dissolved. In December 1956 the Church moved to Clapton, where Mr Nicholson had started out, to premises in Rookwood Road which had been used as a church for the Agapemonites but had been disused for over fifty years. The move was as a result of the death (the funeral was conducted by Mr Nicholson) of Ruth Preece, the so-called "spiritual bride" of J H Smyth-Pigott, the "Clapton Messiah", leader of the Agapemonite sect.

Perhaps we also need a database of European Independent Churches.

Woman claims to be St. Mary, out from monastery � Addis Journal

Woman claims to be St. Mary, out from monastery -- Addis Journal:

A woman who claims to be St. Mary reincarnated was thrown out of Wocnhi Monastery in Western Shoa.

Head of the local Holy Synod, Abba Haile Girorgis Terfe told Sima Tsidqe, the bimonthly official Ethiopian Orthodox Church newspaper, that the unnamed woman has been disseminating heresies in Addis Ababa and other towns before moving to Wonchi St. Kirkos Monastery, near Ambo two years ago, where she established her own sect and made claims like, “My mother having been resurrected was taken up to Heaven. I am St. Mary reincarnated. I will give birth to Christ soon.”

Hat-tip to Ndesanjo Macha.