in pastoral ministry in Portsmouth and Fareham. Church career Parish priest In 1966, Murphy-O'Connor became the private secretary to Bishop Derek Worlock of Portsmouth. In September 1970, he was appointed parish priest of the Immaculate Conception church in Portswood, Southampton. Soon afterwards, in late 1971, he was appointed rector of the Venerable English College, his alma mater. As rector he hosted the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, on his historic visit to Pope Paul VI in 1977. Bishop On 17 November 1977, Murphy-O'Connor was named Bishop of Arundel and Brighton by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 21 December from Bishop Michael Bowen, with Archbishop George Dwyer and Bishop Anthony Emery serving as co-consecrators. He held important positions among the bishops of Europe and has also been consistently influential in ecumenical work; from 1982 to 2000 he was a co-chairman of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission. In 2000 he was awarded the Lambeth degree of Doctor of Divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, in recognition of his work for Christian unity. Archbishop and cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was appointed the tenth Archbishop of Westminster, and thus head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, on 15 February 2000; in November of that year he was elected President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. In the consistory of 21 February 2001 he was created Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria sopra Minerva by Pope John Paul II. He was appointed to four curial organisations: the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, the Pontifical Council for the Study of Organisational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, and the Pontifical Council for the Family. He also served on the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Laity, and was secretary of the Vox Clara commission which oversees the translating of liturgical texts from Latin into English. Murphy-O'Connor belonged to a group of approximately a dozen like-minded cardinals and bishops – all Europeans – who met annually from 1995 to 2006 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to discuss reforms with respect to the appointment of bishops, collegiality, bishops' conferences, the primacy of the papacy and sexual morality; they differed among themselves, but shared the view that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was not the sort of candidate they hoped to see elected at the next conclave.