Meet Father Colin

An interview with our Father Colin Jones, Chaplain

How did you come to Portugal, and to Porto, Father Colin?   Porto has been my home since August 2022. I came here on my retirement from my last parish, as I thought it then, in the Diocese of Worcester, in the United Kingdom.

I’d fallen in love decades before with the whole Iberian Peninsula, finding both Spain and Portugal safely different, slightly exotic. Then, when I first walked the Caminho in 1992, the experience resonated on lots of levels, including the friendships made. All those years later, it was a sabbatical hike from Tavira to Santiago that gave me the time and space to think how I might be useful, in an Anglican sense, in retirement, and having visited St James on pilgrimages, and felt comfortable, I concluded I’d move to Porto. I assisted for two years, then was approached, interviewed, and licensed as Chaplain on 1 December 2024.

What has your journey been through life and ministry to this point in time?  

I was born in Cardiff, where I lived until I was 18. Despite my surname, it was a very English part of Wales, before speaking Welsh became once again widespread. I studied Law at the University of Southampton, returned to Cardiff to complete my training with a small, good firm of solicitors, and was literally waiting in the office for the post to come with my practicing certificate when I felt I might not be able to do this for the rest of my life and I would explore the idea of ordination … whether this itch was just a kind of dissatisfaction, or a genuine call.

Still, Law had given me a sense of being analytical, of appropriateness, of achieving a just end, and of compromise rather than rigidity, and I’m grateful for that.

At the College of the Resurrection in Northfield, I received a rigorous preparation for the demands of ministry. I spent my curacy in Llandaff, then 10 years in Birmingham, before an attractive advertisement for ‘someone to walk the Emmaus Road with them’ drew me to the parish in the Diocese of Worcester.

That sounds a beautiful description of ministry, Father Colin …

It was a blessed time. It’s part of what you hope your ministry will be – to encourage people to explore and meet the Risen Christ, if they are so motivated, of course.

What did, and do you enjoy outside of your work?

I had two beautiful dogs, one after the other, a rescue, and from a puppy, but not now. You know about the walking and hiking. I love cinema, so immersive and absorbing of the senses. The three films I keep thinking about are, from my youth, Dr Zhivago, and A Tale of Two Cities; and more recently, I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov’s book, of course – because it’s a meditation on what is humanity, and the music captures the abiding, underlying threat, plus the humour … I love music – opera, classical, especially Renaissance, and Fado! I go to concerts.

I read a lot, on history and culture. Fiction, three books stand out for me. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol awakened me at a young age to social evils and the need for social justice, for compassion. Cervantes’ Don Quixote asks the question: Is the person who recklessly follows a noble desire the lunatic? – or the one who lives in the real world, but without romance? Then there’s Graham Greene’s powerful reworking of this story, Monsignor Quixote – slightly guilt-filled, but hopeful.

A novel which is the story of a priest, and a journey! How would you describe your spirituality, Father Colin?

Spirituality is how we try to make real in our own lives and circumstances how we live out the gospel, and in the Risen Christ. It encompasses all the changes in us as we move through life, building from our experiences.

It’s wrong to think we can take a spirituality off a peg and fit into it like putting on a suit. But it’s right that we can look back and out at others’ lives and learn where they ran into dead ends, and what some spiritualities offer.

I’m drawn to the Benedictine philosophy – not because it’s monastic, but as a crucible of relationships between people trying to live the gospel. It’s about becoming a community in Christ –and being ourselves. It emphasises the need to be human, by keeping a balance between work or study, prayer, and rest; and accepts the deep meaning of the New Testament letters, that we are most appropriately human when we are in community.

Then there’s Teresa of Avila, who, also from a different age, offers psychological insight into community and tensions, how we comfort others, and build them up, not take them to task.

In a healthy church, everyone must be alert to the needs of others and confident to respond, as well as foster their own vocation in themselves.

We are all listening to other people in whom God is working.  

There will always be human tensions – but we’re called to resolve them in Christ and show the world a new and radical way through the Good News of Jesus Christ. We’re God’s experiment, not perfect, but handling things differently; not repeating the mistakes of the past but finding new and exciting ways to be human and community and church.

A pilgrim church, for people negotiating, navigating how we move through a world which is losing its certainties, grappling to discover its own worth and perspective.

It feels almost providential that our chaplaincy is so close to the modern Caminho. Situated 150 metres off the coastal route from Lisbon via Porto, with its density of footfall, St James offers pilgrims prayer, encouragement, and a stamp to evidence their onward journey; and an opportunity, I hope, for their interior life.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice for living, what would it be?

If my younger self were prepared to listen, I’d borrow from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams … How, every day you need to wake up and say, Jesus, help me to see the world today through your eyes.

I think for me that distils the essence of spirituality.