Sunday 19th September 2021 was the 50th anniversary of Reverend Canon Andrew Dow’s (OA 1964) ordination to the Church of England priesthood. Together with his wife and two grown up daughters, Andrew attended the 11.15am service that Sunday in St Albans Abbey.

Andrew said, “the Abbey was familiar to me long before 1971. As a pupil of St Albans School, I attended the twice weekly obligatory act of worship. As Head Boy in my final year, it fell to me to lead the School in the saying of the Lord’s Prayer. After a week or two, a member of staff is alleged to have remarked to a colleague, “Nice to have the prayer recited by someone who obviously believes it.” (!) Yes, by my late teens I was a committed Christian.

“Fifty years on, I have no regrets at the path I chose (or better, to which I was called). My priestly role of representing Jesus Christ to the world, and the world to Christ, has proved an enormous, if hugely demanding, lifelong privilege - at one and the same time, humbling, enriching and transforming.”