Photos: Christ the King Hosts First Catholic Mass

In a Sunday mass, a church in Hampton officially became Catholic.

Christ the King Catholic Church—as it’s now called—hosted a mass on Sunday to receive and confirm its parishoners

The church, formerly Anglican, moved to the Catholic church under a process that began last year in the United States. The church was brought into the Catholic fold under the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, a diocese-level organization set up to receive former Anglican parishes while allowing them to keep some of their Anglican traditions.

Father Ed Meeks, Christ the King’s rector, was ordained as a Catholic priest in a ceremony in Washington on Saturday. Read our Friday feature on Meeks.

Eighty-eight parishioners were officially confirmed into the Catholic Church—the rest of the church’s roughly 130 members were not ready to be confirmed because they are either children or have issues such as a marriage that must be annulled, a spokeswoman for the ordinariate said.

The service was a mix of both traditional Catholic hymns and more contemporary worship songs.

Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, the head of the ordinariate, presided over the mass. He called it a “extraordinary, historic moment” for the church.

“Most of us come from a church that could literally not say what it believed,” sait Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop. “What is remarkable about the church you are joining is you will never be left in doubt again.”

He also reserved a moment in his sermon for the Fortnight for Freedom, an initiative by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to protest governmental policies it sees as assaults on religious liberty—particularly a recent federal mandate that non-church employees be entitled to health insurance that includes coverage for contraception.

The protests, he said, ensure “that we could hold faith to the deepest principles that we have without interference from the state.”