Bishop to dedicate new Catholic church

Published on Tuesday 28 October 2008 21:03

A NEW Catholic church will be dedicated this weekend near the site where the Catholic House of Stuart's hopes for a restoration to the British throne died on the battlefield in 1746.

The new place of worship is about a mile from the site of the battle of Culloden which ended in defeat for Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his Jacobite army at the hands of the Hanoverian troops.

St Columba's will be the first Catholic church built in Inverness since St Ninian's in 1959. It will also end a 30-year wait by the local congregation for their own premises.

The Rt Rev Peter Moran, Bishop of Aberdeen, will dedicate the new building. He will be joined by other priests of the diocese, including Canon Duncan Stone, 92, formerly of St Mary's, Inverness, who bought the two-acre site from the Forestry Commission for a new building to meet the needs of the Catholic people who were moving into new housing developments during the 1970s.