Eternal Memory: Right Revd Monsignor Canon Cecil Richard Rutt

Fr John Salter, chairman, writes in Chrysostom, Pascha 2012:

It was in 1951 that I first met Richard Rutt, when he was a seminarian at the Anglican monastery of the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham. He was ordained that same year to the priesthood, having served for three years in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and having obtained a degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After a curacy of three years at St. George's, Cambridge, he joined the Korean Mission, a work with which the Kelham Fathers had a long tradition of service. For twenty years Richard served the Anglican Church in Korea, and being an expert linguist he soon became fluent in the language, whilst parish priest of Anjung. He later ran the theological seminary and became Archdeacon of West Kyonggi, and later Assistant Bishop of Taejon, becoming Diocesan Bishop in 1968 until 1974, when he was invited by Bishop Graham Leonard of Truro to become Suffragan Bishop of St. Germans. He then added another language to his repertoire – Cornish.

In 1979 he became Bishop of Leicester, succeeding Bishop Ronald Williams, a Liberal Evangelical, who was never seen out-of-doors without his gaiters and apron. Richard brought a different oversight from his predecessor.

Richard had a great love of the Eastern Churches and married in Hong Kong, Joan Ford, who was co-secretary with Helle Georgiadis of the Fellowship of SS. Alban & Sergius, based in those days at 52, Ladbroke Grove in West London. As a young man he had met the great Catholic "apostle of unity", the Abbe Paul Couturier on a visit to Lyons. He took to heart Couturier's priestly life and sense of mission, which lay at the heart of his spiritual ecumenism, and as an Anglican devoted his ministry to the reconciliation of Christians, especially the communion of all the Churches with the Apostolic See of Peter at Rome.

Richard was an expert knitter and even knitted his own mitres. In 1994, following the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Church of England, Richard was received into the communion of the 
Catholic Church, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1995. He assisted at the Catholic church of St. Mary Immaculate in Falmouth. The loss of his wife, Joan, came as a blow to Richard and he seemed to age dramatically after her death. However, the conferring on him by the Holy Father in 2009 the rank of Prelate of Honour and the title of “Monsignor” gave him great pleasure. But he did not live much longer to enjoy the title – he died on 27th July 2011.