Catherine Butler juggles the demands of several high-profile bosses from her office at Westminster Abbey By Joanne Christie
A faithful role
FOR MANY PAS, there’s no such thing as a typical day — the role involves jumping in and helping out wherever you’re needed. For Catherine Butler, PA to the canons of Westminster, this is especially true and on one occasion, she even found that helping out meant coming face to face with the Queen. “The week before Easter the Queen came to the Royal Maundy
service. It is a thing that happens every year the Thursday before Easter, where she goes to different cathedrals around the country and hands out money, it is a tradition that goes way back. “One of the canons I work for had nominated people to
receive the Maundy. But one of the ladies we nominated was ill on the day so Jane [Hedges] asked me to stand in for her. So I received the Royal Maundy from the Queen on behalf of someone else. It was incredible, she has such a presence and it was a really amazing experience.” Rev Jane Hedges, sub-dean of Westminster, is responsible for
the day-to-day running of the famous cathedral and is one of four canons Catherine works for in her busy role. The others — Very Rev John Hall, also the dean, Rev Andrew Tremlett and Rev Ver- non White — all fulfil different functions at the Abbey and keep her busy with both professional and personal tasks; for the canons the Abbey is not just their workplace but also their home.
GETTING THE BALANCE “The variety is the thing that I love but you never know quite what is going to turn up around the corner,” says Catherine. “There are the usual challenges of a busy office but we are also balancing the fact that while we are primarily a church, we are
also a huge visitor attraction, so we are trying to get the bal- ance just right between being a worshipful environment and being a visitor environment.” Catherine’s role involves everything from the usual emails and other correspondence, to arranging religious visits and cer- emonies. “We have parishes that like to visit the Abbey for evening pilgrimages, so I arrange those. We have a team of clergy who come to the Abbey for a few weeks so I organise their rota. The duty chaplain might come in just for a chat or because something has gone missing. We have baptisms for a certain amount of people at the Abbey — I love organising and deal- ing with the baptism families that come in. “We’ve also just set up an Institute at the Abbey, which is
bringing together the church and the state — looking at faith in the public square. We are launching that properly in the autumn so that is going to be very exciting. We also have a memorial for CS Lewis coming up and I’m helping arrange that.”
FAITH IN THE ROLE When your bosses are highly ranked religious figures and your workplace plays host to leaders such as Pope Benedict and the Dalai Lama, you’d think the religious side of things might be quite daunting, but luckily for Catherine, she had a solid understanding of faith before starting at the Abbey five-and-a-half years ago. “I’m a vicar’s daughter, my mum is an RE teacher and I stud-
ied theology at university — I didn’t intend to but I didn’t quite get the grades I wanted to study medicine so I thought theol- ogy might be the best way.”
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