Scottish Catholic Observer

Bishop Joseph Toal has welcomed a new priest for Argyll and the Isles and expressed his hope that many more men will ‘answer the Lord’s call’ in all Scottish dioceses.

Fr Anthony Wood was ordained a priest at Oban’s St Columba’s Cathedral last Wednesday evening. This was the fourth ordination to the priesthood in Scotland this summer, after Glasgow Archdiocese recently welcomed Fr Stuart Reynolds, and Fr Andrew Garden and Fr Paul Lee were ordained for St Andrews and Edinburgh Archdiocese.

“We are very happy to have a new priest in the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles,” Bishop Toal said following the ordination Mass. “As Fr Tony begins his priestly ministry we pray that others will respond and answer the Lord’s call to priesthood in all the Scottish dioceses.”

Fr Anthony Wood studied for the priesthood at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome. He arrived in Argyll and the Isles from his hometown of Stoke-on-Trent in England, where his parents, who have both since passed away, had arrived from Poland.

From 1978-1986, Anthony Wood worked in the medical branch of the Royal Navy. He told the SCO that, prior to joining the navy, a vocation to the priesthood was something he had thought about, but he decided to ‘put it on the backburner’ during his years of commitment to the Forces. Following his departure from the Royal Navy, it would not be for another two decades—during which he re-trained and worked as a secondary school teacher—and two significant events, that he pursued his vocation: over the course of two days in 2005, Anthony Wood’s mother and Pope John Paul II died.

“These events had a big impact on me, but I actually waited another two years before acting on my vocation as I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a reaction to these events,” Fr Wood said.

The newly ordained priest moved to Argyll and the Isles to stay with his brother, Stephen, and his wife, who joined him at his ordination Mass along with his sister, Mary Scally.

Following his ordination, Fr Wood is currently serving in Oban this month and will move to Rothesay next month, before he takes up his first appointment as a priest, serving the parishes of Arisaig and Glenfinnan.

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—     Pic: Anthony MacMillian

—This story was published in full in the July 12 print edition of the SCO, available in parishes.