Fr Tony (Antoine) Baya

 My name is Antoine Baya.  I was born of Paulette née Pierre and Simon Baya on the 20th of October 1950 in Mauritius.  

I came to England to join my parents on the 23rd December 1963 accompanied by my Grandmother and my 4 siblings.

 My first home you could really say was Whipps Cross hospital where I spent 3 months convalescing from Osteomyelitis, having already spent 9 months in hospital in Mauritius with the same illness.  As a result of the illness I lost 1 year of secondary studies. 

I began secondary studies in earnest at St George’s Catholic Secondary School in Walthamstow where I lived.  In 1974, I joined the friars and spent 13 months in the Noviciate at Chilworth in Guildford, Surrey.  The following 5 years I spent at the Franciscan Study Centre at Canterbury in formation for the Priestly Ministry.  The last year, that is, the 6th year of studies, I spent at the Missionary Institute in Mill Hill as a Deacon and on 27th of March 1982 I was ordained priest at my alma mater, the Franciscan Study Centre in Canterbury.

In March of 1982 I was appointed to the Parish of St Francis of Assisi in Stratford, moving to the Parish of St Francis of Assisi in Glasgow after the Provincial Chapter of 1984.  From thence I went to Madagascar where I spent 5 years in a house of formation before being appointed to my native Mauritius where I spent a total of 6 years, the last 3 as Parish Priest there. 

In 2001 I was made Secretary of the Province of Nairobi which, until then, had been a Custody.  (The said Custody was the result of the OFM General administration’s initiative to establish and expand the Franciscan footprint in East Africa, a fitting way to celebrate the jubilee of the eighth centenary of the birth of St. Francis of Assisi.  As a result, Madagascar, which had, up till then, been looked after by the French friars was incorporated into the African Project.  Like everywhere in the Western world today, the French Province was already facing the pinch of manpower crisis and was happy for Madagascar to be part of what began as the Africa Project).  

After 3 years as Secretary of the Province I was moved to Rwanda where I stayed for 3 years before coming back to the English Province in October of 2009. 

In 2010 I was made Secretary of the English Province moving to Woodford friary for that purpose.  I spent 6 years as Secretary moving back to Stratford halfway through my term  in order to help out in the Parish at Stratford.  I was at the same time Vicar of that friary. 

In 2014, the English Province of the Immaculate Conception was demoted to a Custody due to the reduced number of  friars.  And finally after the Custodial Chapter of 2018, I was moved to Clevedon friary as Guardian where I chose to help out in the Parish.  All friars help out when posted to a friary attached to a Parish.  

The English entity of what once was the Province of Great Britain now belongs to the Irish Province and has been a member for three years already.  At the departure of Fr Reg Gray, I was made Acting Parish Priest of the Church of the Immaculate Conception before being ratified as its incumbent at the recent 2026 Provincial Chapter, retaining the office of Guardian of Clevedon friary. 

Fr Antony with a selection of art and crafts he created as a school-boy

As a school-boy Antony first attended the appropriately named St Antony’s Primary school. His secondary school was St Pauls (now Trinity Catholic High School). Both schools are in Woodford Green, London, adjacent to the local parish church which is served by the Franciscans from the nearby friary. With such a start to his education it is no surprise that he first felt his vocation at secondary school and would be ordained a priest in the Franciscan Order.

Fr Antony was born in 1949 to catholic parents living in Woodford Green.  His father worked in the office of the Chief Education Officer in East Ham.  Mum was born in Birkenhead but brought up in Antwerp. and became a nurse. 

Although keen to join the Franciscans immediately after school Antony was told by the Franciscan director of vocations to get some experience of adult life. To pay his way the 16 year old Antony joined WH Smiths, the former high street stationery retailer, working in their music department selling records for the princely sum of £7 a week! After 12 months he was effectively running the department and decided to look for a better paid job. He joined a specialist record retailer, Discurio, working at their shop in Shepherd Street, Mayfair - Peter Ustinov was one of his customers.

In September 1968, aged 19, Antony was finally accepted into the novitiate and he joined the community at Chilworth Friary. Once he had completed his year as a novice he was moved to the friary at East Bergholt, Suffolk where he studied philosophy and theology for the next 6 years. The friary closed in 1973 and he moved to the Franciscan study centre, Canterbury, for the next 4 years. He was ordained on the Feast of St Luke, 18th October 1975.

Fr Antony was a young and inexperienced priest when sent to undertake pastoral work in Canterbury prison. Fortunately he was taken under the wing of another of the prison chaplains who helped him avoid many of the hazards of working in a prison. Nonetheless he managed to lock himself in a cell. He describes an improbably strong gust of wind through the small cell window swinging the heavy prison door shut on him. The senior warder was highly displeased to hear Fr Antony ringing the emergency bell to be released and gave him a thorough tellling off. Despite the personal embarrassment the incident raised Fr Antony’s standing amongst the inmate significantly enhancing his relationship with them. They say the Holy Spirit works in all sorts of ways!

An early experience while a deacon in Canterbury brought home to him the lasting impact on the congregation of an unsympathetic parish priest. He was in Dover visiting parishioners at home when a couple turned him away because of their experiences with an unpopular parish priest who had moved on several years previously.

From Canterbury Fr Antony was posted to Glasgow to serve the large catholic community living in and around the Gorbals. He well remembers the linguistic difficulties caused by the Glasgow accents and dialect. People reacted with puzzlement when he answered “yes” to their question “are you comfortable?” It was many months before he realised they were asking “where are you from?”  or   “where ye comfrae?” in the local vernacular. He also corresponded with donors supporting the missions from overseas and started writing a newsletter as a thankyou to them. This  got him noticed and he was asked to take on editing the Troubador - a Franciscan magazine profiling the work of their Missionaries around the world.

Fr Antony was 9 years an assistant priest before moving from Glasgow to Forest Gate, as Provincial Director of the Franciscan Missionary Union (FMU). 3 years later he was appointed Guardian at Forest Gate.  As Provincial FMU Director he visited all the friars in the UK. As Guardian Fr Antony was first faced with the challenges of building maintenance, which followed the rest of his career. 

After 6 years at Forest Gate Fr Antony was moved back to Canterbury this time as Guardian and a member of the Franciscan provincial governing board. It was at this time (1974) that Fr Antony was diagnosed as suffering from Type 1 Diabetes, an incurable chronic condition that he has had to manage ever since. The diagnosis happened by chance. Fr Antony had become friends with a local GP and his family visiting them at home. During one visit the GP asked Fr Antony for a urine sample and then instructed him to go to the local hospital for a blood test. While walking back from the hospital Fr Antony was surprised to be intercepted by the GP in his car and told to get in. The GP had checked with the hospital about the result of the blood test, which was not good, and arranged an urgent hospital admission for Fr Antony!

Fr Antony’s next posting was to the community at Woodford Green - back to his roots - where he spent the next 6 years before returning to the friary in Glasgow as Guardian. Scotland retained its hold when he was next moved to Craigmiller in Edinburgh as Parish Priest and Guardian. It was in the latter role that Fr Antony had to grapple with the financial and organisational challenges of a leaking roof, asbestos in the ceilings and providing disabled access while maintaining the weekly liturgies for the parish. Happily he had fostered an excellent rapport with the next door primary school, which offered its hall as a temporary place of worship while the parish church was closed for repair. 

After Edinburgh Fr Antony returned to Glasgow for the third time, now as assistant priest and Vicar of the House. He recalls how enthusiastically parishioners supported a novena run on Tuesday evenings with hundreds of people attending. He would buy 2,000 lilies over the course of the year to decorate the church for the novena. The flower seller gave the church a good price and in addition would generously donate surplus stock for the parish to sell and raise funds. 

A few years after returning to Glasgow Fr Antony became aware that Fr Reg was living on his own in Clevedon - Fr Maurice and Fr Rodger had both entered nursing homes. When he realised that no one had been posted to replace them Fr Antony volunteered to move from Glasgow to join Fr Reg.

Fr Antony writes, "what really makes a place is the people there themselves. I have been fortunate to have been made very welcome at every parish I have stayed at."   

Fr Eddie Highton OFM

Fr Edmund (Eddie) Highton joined the community of Friars in Clevedon in September 2024. Fr Eddie was born the eighth and youngest child of Catholic parents living in the Huyton district of Liverpool on June 9th, 1940. His mother was a housewife and his father, after service in the Army during the second World War, worked in the Liverpool fish market.

After leaving school Eddie joined a company importing and exporting goods from Liverpool docks. He quickly learned the trade and secured promotion into a second shipping company. 

8 years on Eddie started his journey into the priesthood. This came about through his love of walking when he joined a retreat organised by his local Catholic Rambling Group. The retreat introduced him to two books which had a profound influence on his choice of future life, they  were ‘The Imitation of Christ’ by Thomas á Kempis (a 15th Century Dutch cleric) and a biography of St Francis ‘Il Povorello’.

Eddie gave up his job and was accepted into the Jesuit college, Campion House at Osterly, for men who felt they might have a late vocation to a religious life.  In 1966 he started his novitiate in the Franciscan Order and was eventually ordained in 1973.

The Order sent Fr Eddie to work in its missions in Natal, South Africa, where he spent the next 28 years. He started in Newcastle where he learned to speak the Zulu language and undertook a programme of cultural orientation to prepare him to work with the native people of Natal. He was then based in Ladysmith but spent long periods living in Zulu villages in rural areas. This experience gave Fr Eddie a deep respect for the Zulu whom he describes as ‘wonderful people for their hospitality, missionary outlook and their great faith in Christ. 

Fr Eddie had three aims when first sent overseas: to develop the church where he was working to grow from an apostolic prefecture to become a diocese; to see the abolition of apartheid; and to establish the Franciscan Order in South Africa. He admits that furthering these aims meant breaking the strict apartheid laws which banned integrated teaching - even in seminaries!  By the time he left to return to the UK he had contributed to the achievement of all three aims and could hand over his work to Franciscans ordained from the mixture of races making up the local population.

For the first 3 months of his return Fr Eddie attended Hawkstone Hall, a seminary run by the Redemptorist Order, to help make the adjustment back to life in the UK. He was then sent to the Friary at Craigmillar in Edinburgh where he spent the next 4 years as Guardian and subsequently Parish Priest. From Edinburgh the Order sent him to Glasgow. Here he served the Catholic population of the Gorbals in the Parish of Blessed John Duns Scotus for the next 19 years. This was his last posting before moving south to Clevedon.

Fr Eddie loves walking although he confesses that the Clevedon landscape is a little hillier than he has been used to in Glasgow! He is a keen follower of most sports and is learning about the football clubs locally and in Bristol. 

Fr Eddie’s message to our parish is: “I have a love for all people. I want to help you on a pathway to God following in the footsteps of St Francis.”   

Deacon John Woodcock OBE

John is married to June and has three children and eight grandchildren.

He was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop Mervyn Alexander in September 1997 and is responsible for the usual diaconal duties of assisting at Mass, preaching, baptising, and visiting the sick.

John graduated in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Durham and then studied for a master’s degree and PhD at Guy’s Hospital, University of London.

He was appointed Professor of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering at Cardiff University School of Medicine in 1982 where he headed both the University and the NHS Departments of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering. His research interests were mainly in ultrasound and in the non-invasive measurement of blood flow and included the measurement of cerebral blood flow and cardiac output during periods of weightlessness with the European Space Agency.

John was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) by the University of Durham in 2003 and is both a chartered physicist and a chartered engineer.

In 2023 he was awarded the Academic Gold Medal of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine in recognition of his substantial and sustained track record at an outstanding level of contribution to the advancement of academic practice related to physics and engineering applied to medicine and biology.

John was awarded an OBE for services to medical science in 1998 and was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2012.