Victor Guazzelli served as an auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster and held the titular see of Lindisfarne.
16 Facts About Victor Guazzelli
1.
2.
Victor Guazzelli was known as a devoted supporter of social justice.
3.
Victor Guazzelli was born in Stepney on 19 March 1920 of Italian immigrants from Lucca, Tuscany.
4.
At the age of nine, Victor told his father he wanted to enter the priesthood.
5.
Cesare gave his blessing, and in 1935 Victor Guazzelli left for the English College, Lisbon, a Roman Catholic seminary.
6.
Whilst attending the seminary, World War II broke out and Victor Guazzelli was unable to return to London until 1945, by which time he was already a priest.
7.
Now fluent in Portuguese and Italian, Victor Guazzelli took up a post at St Patrick's, Soho Square, before being recalled to the seminary in Lisbon as bursar, and to teach Church history and Scripture.
8.
In 1958, Victor Guazzelli came back to the staff at Westminster Cathedral, at the time when Pope John XXIII was beginning to make changes in the Catholic Church, which would culminate in the Second Vatican Council and the new rite of mass.
9.
In 1970, Victor Guazzelli was made an auxiliary bishop of Westminster and titular Bishop of Lindisfarne.
10.
In 1976, Cardinal Hume divided the diocese into pastoral areas and Victor Guazzelli was made area bishop in east London, covering the deprived boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
11.
In 1975, Victor Guazzelli became president of the peace movement, Pax Christi.
12.
That year, Victor Guazzelli was the only English Catholic bishop to join a big CND demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
13.
Victor Guazzelli then turned his attentions to an East End in the throes of change.
14.
Victor Guazzelli invited all to have their say at the new East London Pastoral Area.
15.
Victor Guazzelli gathered a 'hit squad' of priests to conduct intensive six-week missions in the parishes.
16.
Victor Guazzelli stayed on at Poplar after retirement age but, after a haemorrhage, his life saved by the nuns at Pope John House, he decided to return to Westminster Cathedral.