(Simon Caldwell/Catholic Herald) — The Catholic church in which the Victorian mystic Teresa Higginson was said to have received rapturous visions of the Crucifixion is threatened with closure after the archdiocese withdrew its support for the provision of the Latin Mass there.
The Archdiocese of Liverpool has announced that either St Mary’s, Wigan, or nearby St John’s Church will close.
Both churches are Grade II-listed and pre-date the Catholic Emancipation of the 1829, with St Mary’s built in the neo-Gothic style in 1818 and St John’s in the neo-Classical style a year later.
St Mary’s is the church where Higginson worshipped at a time in her life when she was being oppressed by Devil and receiving divine apparitions.
