The Catholic Church played a formative role in the emergence of Citizens UK in the late 1990s in London’s East End. Bishop Victor Guazzelli, then Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Westminster, encountered the model of broad-based community organising in the United States and soon decided to support Neil Jameson, founder of Citizens UK. With Bishop Guazzelli's backing, The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) was established in 1996 as the first Citizens UK alliance.

At the time, Bishop Guazzelli’s assistant, Bernadette Farrell, was closely involved in this work and later went on to found South London Citizens in 2004.

Over the past three decades, Catholic institutions have remained central to Citizens UK’s mission, engaging thousands of leaders in campaigns that have improved the lives of millions across the UK.

In the article below, Bernadette Farrell reflects on the history of the Migrants Mass, which marks its 20th anniversary this year. The Migrants Mass has been instrumental in shaping the Living Wage campaign and has underpinned much of the pioneering migrant justice work developed by Citizens UK alliances over the years.

With thanks to Brendan Walsh, editor at The Tablet, for permission to republish this article. It originally appeared in print on Saturday 2 May 2026.

To find out more about our organising work with Catholic communities, get in touch with seb.chapleau@citizensuk.org. 

Article written by Bernadette Farrell, former Deputy Director of Citizens UK.

Next week will mark the twentieth anniversary of the first “Migrants’ Mass”.

Inaugurated by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at the suggestion of London Citizens and celebrated on the first Monday of May, it has become a fixture in the capital city’s calendar. Hosted annually by the dioceses of Brentwood, Southwark and Westminster, it brings together Citizens’ member parishes, ethnic chaplaincies, diocesan justice and peace com missions, representatives from Caritas, Cafod, the Jesuit Refugee Service, other churches and faiths and many civic leaders for vibrant, joyful liturgies that combine tradition and creativity, prayer and solidarity.

In 2025, for the first time, the event moved beyond London to Brighton. The presider was the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Richard Moth, who will preach at this year’s Mass in St Antony of Padua church, Forest Gate, in the Brentwood diocese on Monday, as the Archbishop of Westminster. The original event was on May Bank Holiday 2006, the Feast of St Joseph the Worker, in Westminster Cathedral. The packed congregation rose up in prolonged applause at Cardinal Cormac’s homily; many were in tears:

In 2007 and 2009, the Migrants’ Mass spilled over into a packed Trafalgar Square, where up to 20,000 people waved union flags alongside those of all nations. The momentum created put wind into the sails of the Strangers into Citizens campaign and encouraged political leaders to support the “pathway to citizenship” that enabled countless undocumented migrants to receive their papers.

My eyes had been opened by conversations with migrants living in the East End of London when I was working as an adviser to the late Bishop Victor Guazzelli. He’d realised that the Catholic Church would only have an impact on civil society if it worked side by side with other churches, schools, colleges, mosques, synagogues, trade unions and neighbourhood associations. He met Neil Jameson, the Quaker founder of Citizens UK, and the broad-based alliance they built garnered wide enough political support to establish a living wage, launch reforms of an often-inadequate immigration system and, by 2011, to end the routine detention of children for immigration purposes.

In July 2016, during Theresa May’s premiership, after lengthy campaigning by Citizens UK and others the Community Sponsorship scheme was officially launched, with Catholic parishes at the forefront. During the 2019 Migrants’ Mass in Westminster Cathedral, a Syrian family stood bravely to thank eight Catholic parishes who had sponsored them as they built a new life in the UK. Westminster Cathedral hosted the first in-person Mass for Migrants after the Covid pandemic on 2 May 2022, just two months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Europe facing the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Birthright citizenship has not existed in the UK since 1982. A parent of a child born in the UK must either have British citizenship or permanent residence, and even eligible children face immense barriers. Schools welcomed last year’s full extension of free school meals to children in households with no recourse to public funds (NRPF), first won during the pandemic by South London Citizens. The “Children into Citizens” campaign is working to reform rules for the most vulnerable members of society. In May 2022 the Home Office introduced long-awaited fee waivers for child visas. This has enabled almost 30,000 children, including those in care, to gain the status to which they are entitled, without paying extortionate fees.

Overseas care workers make an invaluable impact on the lives of the elderly and infirm in the UK. In 2022, to help stem critical staffing shortages, the “skilled worker visa” was expanded to include care workers. Retrospective changes in legislation have left migrants working in the care sector facing uncertainty and insecurity.

The annual Migrants’ Mass is an opportunity for this generation to witness to the dignity of every person, to celebrate the contribution migrants make to our communities, to proclaim God’s new order and to act together to interpret the “signs of the times”. All that we need exists in abundance within Creation and within our communities. Meeting young Citizens UK leaders in Rome in June 2025, Pope Leo praised and encouraged their tenacity. His missionary heart still firmly with the poor, he has announced that the theme for World Migrants and Refugees Day on 27 September will be “Even just one of these children”, referencing Matthew 18:5 and putting the safeguarding of minors under the spotlight.

The traditional Masai greeting is Kasserian Ingera? (“And how are the children?”). Every healthy community should take the flourishing of the young and vulnerable as the measure of its well-being. If the children are safe, the community is at peace.