“Behold the star which he had seen in the East went before him”
With great sadness, the Society extends its heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and brother clergy and former parishioners of its beloved former Chairman, Father John Salter, who died peacefully at the age of 91 early on 8th July 2026.
A distinguished and devoted priest of the Eparchy of the Holy Family of London of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Great Britain, and an unstinting friend to the cause of freedom and justice for Ukraine and its people people, Father John was born on the 22nd November 1934 into a farming family in Shropshire, England.
Educated at Wellington Grammar School, King’s College, London, and its postgraduate seminary for training clergy, St Boniface’s Theological College in Warminster, he was accredited as an Associate of King’s College and ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1961.
As an Anglican, he belonged to the movement of which Saint John Henry Newman had been a founder in the Oxford Movement: usually known as Anglo-Catholic, or Anglo-Papalist, for professing the Catholic faith in life and practice, its tradition has been one of unrelenting search for the achievement of reunion of the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches. From his early life and formation as a layman and throughout his ordained ministry, Father John’s gifts for friendship and deep interest in the richly diverse traditions of belief in Christ were wholeheartedly dedicated to ecumenical reconciliation. Indeed, his first publication made a case for the Church of England to renew its own former union with the Catholic Church – Anglicans and the Holy See, 1966.
His first pastoral appointments were to the parishes of St Peter, Ealing, 1961-65 (where he was ordained priest in the Anglican Church in 1962), St Stephen with St Thomas, Shepherd’s Bush, 1965-66, and St Alban, Holborn with St Peter, Saffron Hill, 1966-70 (under the redoubtable Fr Peter Priest, who rather met in Fr John his genial but unmistakable match). At Shepherd’s Bush, he came into contact with the Orthodox who acquired the recently redundant St Thomas’s Church, now the Greek Orthodox church of St Nicholas. Later at Holborn, he encountered the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community displaced by Stalin’s annexation of western Ukraine and suppression of their Church at the end of World War II; they had settled in the former St Peter’s on Saffron Hill, renamed the Protection of the Mother of God and St Theodore of Tarsus (the altar piece of the demolished building is conserved at the Holy Family Cathedral in Mayfair, and St Theodore is the dedication of its modern English-language mission). Thanks to these early associations, the living history of Eastern Christians – whether Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox or Eastern Catholic, especially those traditions under threat – captured his imagination for the remainder of his life and formed his unique ministry.
From 1970 to 2000 Father John served as Vicar of the parish of St Silas, Pentonville, covering the corner of north London between Caledonian Road, the Regent’s Canal, and the Angel, Islington. St Silas’s and the nearby All Saints’ Mission (by then closed) were renowned centres of the Anglo-Papalist spirit, promoting the practice of Catholic discipleship and devotion in keen anticipation of reunion. In his cheerful, unperturbed and faithful way, Father John nurtured the life of faith he found in the people committed to him, and added to it his own profound impressions from the Christian East. Notable are the installation of the Russian icon of the Mother of God of Kazan as the door upon the Tabernacle, and the striking reredos by Michael Coles installed in 1994, depicting the lost Marian shrine of Our Lady of the Oak at Islington, St John Henry Newman (whom Fr John regarded as a patron of his priestly ministry, presciently haloed long before his beatification in 2010 and canonisation in 2019), and St Elizabeth of Russia (the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and sister to the last Empress of Russia, Alexandra, to whom he was particularly devoted because she had laid aside her standing as an royal princess to become a nun tending to the Moscow poor, until she was martyred by the Bolsheviks).
Another form of pastoral ministry dear to Father John was service as chaplain in the Territorial Army. He had taken to National Service and continued his involvement after training and ordination. He achieved the rank of Major and was awarded the Territorial Decoration for long and efficient service both in the ranks and as an officer chaplain. During National Service he and the future Fr John Seeley were stationed near Brighton, where both came into contact with the famous Anglo-Catholic priest, pastor and spiritual director Fr Colin Gill, Vicar of St Martin’s. He encouraged and inspired their vocations both to priestly ministry in the Church of England and its raison d’être: the cause and realisation of Catholic unity. At St Martin’s Vicarage, he was delighted to meet a frequent visitor, the animator par excellence of Anglican Papalist advocacy of full reunion between “the Church of England entire” and the See of Peter at Rome, Father Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, Rector of St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge. Furthermore, both discovered that they shared an ancestral relationship through John’s forebear Lascelina, wife of Sir Geoffrey de Clinton, Treasurer and Chamberlain to Henry I. Making the Anglican-Catholic reunion cause his own, Father John would later make his distant cousin the subject of his 2012 magnum opus: The Anglican Papalist: A Personal Portrait of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton.
Following a rationalisation of churches and parish boundaries in Islington in 1978, he found himself uniquely placed to take on an additional pastoral charge. He was invited to become Vicar of the Guild Church of St Dunstan-in-the West in Fleet Street, as well as of St Silas’s. From 1979 to 1999, on weekdays Father John served Anglicans working in the west of the City of London, and ensured that at weekends the remarkable octagonal Grade I building with its distinct Anglican and Eastern sanctuaries, could provide a place of worship for Eastern Orthodox Christians exiled from their homelands by Communist persecution. To this day, St Dunstan’s serves as the central London home of the Romanian Orthodox Church, thanks to the charitable and fraternal conditions fostered by Father John.
He was also instrumental in obtaining the use of another City church for the use of those who in conscience had left the Church of England to join the Orthodox Church of the Patriarchate of Antioch. This remarkable work of hospitality and mutual reconciliation between the Anglican authorities and former Anglicans continues with good will to this day, again thanks to the eirenic efforts of Father John from the beginning.
From 1974 Father John was in his element as the Chairman of the Anglican & Eastern Churches Association. An outcome of the Oxford Movement, it had been founded in 1864 to deepen Anglican understanding of the Christian East and to promote unity between what were then seen as the Church’s Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic “branches”. In this role he received appointment as Apokrisarios of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, to the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, during a secondment from his parish in 1974. Other commissions took him behind the Iron Curtain and later into still risky post-Soviet eastern Europe to convey messages of good will from England.
These visits, which continued in support of subsequent Archbishops, relied on a mix of his disarming cordiality, his detailed mental catalogue of events, places and personages, historical integrity and astute observation, to gauge what was more truly going on and indicate inter-Church solidarity with both charity and truth. After the USSR was over, for a visit to Lviv in a newly independent Ukraine in the 1990s, he had been furnished with letter of greetings from the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, to the Greek Catholic Metropolitan and “the Orthodox Metropolitan”. Since there were by now several occupants of the same see in separate Orthodox Churches, he decided it would be best to present the letter to the first who would receive him. This turned out to be the bishop still adhering to the Moscow Patriarchate. The bishop assumed a sympathetic hearing and complained the prominent historic Cathedral of St George was not his, since it had been taken from the Orthodox and entrusted to the newly re-legalised Greek Catholics. “But it was never yours in the first place,” replied Fr John to astonishment. “You have only to read the inscriptions there to see it was built by the Greek Catholic Sheptytskys Athanasius and Leo, who are both buried in the crypt with the other Greek Catholic bishops until it was confiscated by Stalin. Surely you’ve got plenty of your own places.”
But there were challenges too. On a train journey from Greece to Serbia passing through Albania at the height of its Cultural Revolution and the brutal suppression of all religion involving the execution of Christian and Muslim clerics alike, he was stopped by border guards and thought his vocation was about to be martyrdom. He had been careful, however, not to complete his travel documents by describing his profession as “Clerk in Holy Orders” but instead simply “Clerk”. Under questioning, he was later able to reflect, “I didn’t lie.”
Throughout his time as Chairman of AECA, he cultivated contacts among Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Oriental Orthodox churches and their leading figures, as well as the Anglicans and Roman Catholics of England, through hosting visits of dignitaries to London and organising unforgettable pilgrimages to sites overseas that in the recent past had been beyond the reach of private west European visitors. Often these required painstaking prior reconnaissance and delicate diplomatic preparation. Together with Fr Anthony Welling, Fr Philip Warner and Jonathan Bolton-Dignam he formed a quadrumvirate as the informed leadership of the Association’s pilgrimage work, and in support of his own unassuming but effective ambassadorship. The consequent development of sustained capacity for ecumenical solidarity with the Christian East to this day in the Church of England London remains in his debt for the bonds he made, particularly in circumstances of great need, risk and isolation.
In recognition of his tireless work for ecumenism and Christian Unity, Fr John was awarded:
- the Archpriest’s Cross, by the Patriarch-Abuna of the Ethiopian Catholic Church
- the Archpriest’s Cross, by Shenouda III, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria
- the Archimandrite’s Cross, of the exiled Byelo-Russian (now Belarusian) Orthodox Church, during the time of its exile and oppression under Soviet rule, in recognition of the friendships and mutual support he had fostered between the exiled Belarusian Orthodox and the Belarusian Catholics under Bishop Česlaus Sipovič.
In 2001, he stepped down as Chairman of AECA and was succeeded by The Revd Canon Dr William Taylor, rector of St John’s, Notting Hill, a long-standing locus of encounter between East and West. He tirelessly continued Fr John’s work in an Anglican context and we were very sad to learn that he, too, died on 7th July, the day before Father John. May his memory be eternal and may he likewise receive the reward of all his labours for Christian Unity.
In 2000, in view of the many changes to the Church of England’s understanding of apostolic faith and order, and its resulting inability to pursue in the same way as before the path towards the organic unity of Christians, Father John concluded that it was right to retire from the Anglican priestly ministry and appointments. His decision to resign five years early at 65 combined his sense of vocation to serve in an Eastern Church with the opportunity to make the most of travel in the East for as long as he was able, especially since there was freedom of religion once more.
A small residence in the Islington Clothworkers’ Almshouses became available. It was so small that he referred to it as the Doll’s House, yet it was crammed with character and fascination, accumulating all his life, travels and interests. These ranged from a substantial collection of books and records on genealogy (especially royal, aristocratic and indeed Salter family records), family pictures, icons, books on the Chrisian East and, in every corner, ecclesiastical accoutrements and photographs of a fascinating life lived worthily and with true purpose.
He was determined to live independently and enjoy, not a clergy retirement home but an almost Trollopian enclave of maverick, or uxorious, or eccentric retired deans, rectors and canons, who seemed resolutely determined to fit nowhere else. When accepting his tenancy as a retired vicar, he felt he should say that he intended to leave the Church of England, but was amused at the rather practical calculation of the agent that it didn’t matter as long as he paid the rent.
Father John declined suggestions that he join the Orthodox Church, owing to his lifelong dedication to the cause of reunion of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome, as the source, seal and guardian of unity for the whole Universal Church. Moreover, he had come greatly to admire the Eastern Catholics who had suffered persecution and martyrdom for confessing that very faith. At first, he sought to serve in the Ukrainian Church because of his earlier, long friendship with Bishop Augustine Hornyak, whom he had encountered in Holborn days, as the first Apostolic Exarch for the Ukrainian Catholics in Great Britain. Unfortunately, his successor, Bishop Michael Kuchmiak, concluded that, while he would be delighted to receive and ordain him, in the circumstances of the times there was little scope either for an English-speaking priest without Ukrainian language, or for much of the kind of ecumenical engagement in which Father John was expert. Yet, with Bishop Michael’s help and encouragement, Father John approached the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
He had assumed that Arabic would be a problem, but the Melkite Church was keen to develop its engagement with the English-speaking west, not least as it wished to extend its capacity for pastoral service of the growing diaspora communities, as well as in ecumenism in the English-speaking world. Thanks to Fr Deacon Richard Downer of the London Melkite parish, he was accepted by Patriarch Gregorios III Laham – at a hotel in London. There followed a time of preparation and liturgical training from Deacon Richard. They flew to Beirut in 2002, where in the Patriarchal Seminary at Harissa, His Beatitude ordained John reader and subdeacon at Vespers in his chapel that same day, and the next morning ordained him deacon in the seminary chapel. The following morning, Patriarch Gregorios ordained Deacon John priest, and with the assistance of Fr Deacon Richard the next day he served the Divine Liturgy for the first time. He remained possessed of the powerful memory of then transferring to the Melkite Patriarchal Cathedral in Damascus on “the Street called Strait” and thus of closeness to St Paul in the days following his conversion.
Immediately, His Beatitude appointed Father John Patriarchal Counsellor for Ecumenical Relations in the United Kingdom and admitted him to the patriarchal Order of St Lazarus as senior Chaplain of Justice. From the outset, then, he was able to continue his work and ministry as an ecumenist, now commissioned in the Catholic Church for unity. This time, however, it was from the East in the West. These happy commissions enabled him to continue, with old friends and colleagues as before, his former links with East-West ecumenism in the Anglican world, relying on the considerable trust and affection in which he was held, since none of his dealings ever bore a spirit of controversy, polemic, or rivalry.
In 2002, Father John also succeeded the highly regarded lay ecumenist Joe Farrelly KSG as Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom. The Society had been founded in 1926 by Archbishop Edward Myers in the diocese of Westminster, with the encouragement of Dom Lambert Beauduin (founder of the famous East-West Benedictine monastery now at Chevetogne in Belgium, also a key figure in the Anglican-Roman Catholic Malines Conversations) and Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky (father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, prior to its subsequent persecution and dissolution under Stalin). Its aims are to promote awareness and support for the Eastern Catholic Churches, particularly those of the Byzantine tradition, as well as to strengthen the bonds of Catholic and Orthodox towards unity. For many years it had been led by Bishop Česlaus Sipovič and then Archpriest Alexander Nadson, the leaders of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church from its international exile centre, national cultural archive and library, and mission and church in Northwood Park, London. Indeed, the icons from the iconostasis created for the foundation of the Society at Westminster Cathedral stand to this day in the chapel of Marian House as well as the beautiful new Church of St Cyril of Turau nearby.
While in the time following Vatican II English Catholic ecumenism focussed strongly on more immediate prospects for reunion in the west and Britain itself, Father John with his extensive Eastern contacts sustained concern for the urgency of unity with the East. This coincided with the arrival and growth in Britain of many more Eastern Christians, not least the Eastern Catholic Churches represented par excellence by the Exarchate (now Eparchy) of the Holy Family of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the more recently founded Eparchy of Preston of the Syro-Malabar Church. Father John steadily rebuilt the Society, recovering its capacity to serve the ecumenical work of the Catholic Church at an opportune moment.
He revived Chrysostom, the Society’s review, with his fascinating recollections of the history, travels and personalities of the past who have contributed to shaping the positive and hopeful relations of today. The Society was then able, thanks to Father John’s encouragement and a commission of Bishop Hlib Lonchyna of the Ukrainian Catholic Exarchate, to establish the regular provision of the Divine Liturgy in English at the Holy Family Cathedral in Duke Street, as both a means of contact and communion among Catholics of East and West, but also in witness and mission to others in the English-speaking world of London seeking to grow more deeply in the life of Christ.
Furthermore, under Fr John’s stewardship, and with a welcome home base for the Society at the Cathedral, the Society could collaborate with other ecumenical societies focusing on East-West Christian relations – for example, AECA, the Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius, the Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage Trust – leading to the establishment, after many years of patient preparation, of a Catholic-Orthodox Pastoral Consultation and dialogue here in England, at the service of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and to aid the community of Orthodox Churches becoming more and more established in Great Britain.
Retirement enabled Fr John to devote himself to scholarly work. His second significant publication in 2007 was Sisters in Christ: Practical Ecumenism, which collects the correspondence between the Mother Superior Cecily of the Anglican Convent of St Saviour, Haggerston in London and the successive Abbesses of the Russian Convent in Exile of Our Lady of Vladimir, first at Harbin, Manchuria, then Shanghai, China, and ultimately in San Francisco, between 1935 and 1951. It is a powerful vista onto the support of Anglican religious sisters to Russian Orthodox nuns in perilous times, as Russian Christians were seeking to establish a new Church life and future in permanent diaspora exile – and the ecumenical truth that, even if separated, the Christians are never alone and can firmly rely on one another in Christ.
At 82, Father John stepped down as Chairman of the Society after nearly 15 years. So much that is now imaginable would have been impossible without his service in a lifetime’s ecumenical friendships and ministry as a disciple of Christ. Most particularly, over the last quarter of a century, he brought his whole life’s work and his many personal gifts into the direct service of the Catholic Church, for the closer revelation of the visible unity of the One Holy “Catholic-Orthodox” and Apostolic Church. In recognition of this, on the recommendation of Bishop Hlib, in October 2016, His Beatitude Patriarch Sviatoslav of Kyiv-Halych, father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, justly awarded him a further accolade: the Golden Cross with Decorations of an honorary Archpriest.
Increasingly unsteady from the mid-2010s in 2018, Archpriest John realised that he was no longer mobile enough to serve at the Melkite parish. He asked to be accepted into the Exarchate of the Holy Family of London of the Ukrainian Catholics, as he had always hoped from back in 2000. Bishop Hlib warmly agreed. Thus, he was able still to visit and concelebrate when he was well enough with his good friends, the clergy and people at the Holy Family Cathedral in Mayfair. Although this service did not continue beyond the coming of the Covid pandemic, the bonds of friendship he had loved so well there continued to sustain him.
His little house remained a happy and vibrant home of hospitality for him and his many friends. Sadly, those diverting friends and fellow inmates in “The Close” began to pass away; by spring 2025 he himself could no longer manage to stay on. After repeated spells in hospital care he eventually settled into a suite in St Anne’s Home, Finsbury Park, which his family adorned with mementoes of a long and full life. Even though his memories were now tired, he never forgot that he was a priest, or that his life’s mission concerned a deep love for the power of the Christian East to bring about unity in Christ. Always at the end of Holy Communion, as he lay in his bed, it was Fr John who instinctively gave the blessing at the end.
In his 92nd year, after a well-loved life fully dedicated to Christ and his Church, he now goes the way of the saints. May the Lord in his mercy welcome him as a good and faithful servant. May those members of his extensive and well-knit kith and kin, whom he loved long since and lost awhile, be there to welcome him into the kingdom of the Father. May his dwelling be where all the saints abide. May his memory be eternal, and may peace and joy in the new creation be his everlasting reward.
Fr Mark Woodruff
Chairman, Society of St John Chrysostom
ssjc.uk
10 July 2026