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Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI really surprised the English-speaking Catholic and Anglican worlds by creating the Ordinariate, a new structure for former Anglican clergy who wanted to come over to Rome,

keeping with them elements of their Anglican patrimony and celebrating Mass according to a form of the Roman right that incorporated prayers by Cranmer,

but also bringing with them some of the Anglo-Catholic

zeal for evangelism that had made high-church Anglicanism so successful, for example, in the Victorian slums.

A relatively small number of priests in Great Britain, North America and Australasia joined the ordinaryinary Act, but there is plenty of evidence that they punch above their weight.

The big question now is what will be the future of the Ordinaryate?

Because since its inception, it has faced a sort of informal, institutional undermining from the powers that be in the Catholic Church,

worried that Benedict might have been inviting more traditionalists or conservatives into the Catholic Church.

It is a fact that the bishops of England and Wales have not given a single church building to the Ordinariate in England and Wales.

But meanwhile, ordinary at congregations are thriving and individual Ordinariate priests have acquired formidable reputations as evangelizers, both here and in the United States.

Both countries now have their own bishops.

And just recently, Pope Leo affirmed his support for the mission of the Ordinary.

So it is clearly going to be a permanent feature of the Catholic Church.

But how can it fully realize the dynamic potential that Pope Benedict, I think quite rightly saw in it? Well, I'm joined today by

two priests of the ordinary at Father Ed Thomas and parish priest to Pembury in Kent, which is

where I was born, though that was the only time I've

...