Peter Amigo

Amigo was consecrated as Bishop of Southwark by Cardinal Francis Bourne on 25 March 1904. Bishop Amigo imposed "minor excommunication" on the Modernist priest George Tyrrell and restricted the possibility of a full Catholic burial when Tyrrell died at Storrington in July 1909. Tyrrell's friend, French priest Henri Brémond nonetheless, attended the burial, made the sign of the cross over the grave, and gave an address for which Amigo then suspended him 'a divinis'. Brémond made his peace with the bishop later that summer and his faculties to celebrate Mass were restored that November.

Corpus Christi Service at bombed-out St George's Cathedral, 1944

After the death of Lord Mayor of Cork and hunger-striker Terence MacSwiney (pron. MacSweeney) in Brixton Prison in October 1920, Amigo granted his family's request for use of the cathedral, despite the government urging otherwise. The bishop said that the Lord Mayor was a Catholic and entitled to the services of his church. Throughout MacSwiney's hunger strike, Amigo had written to politicians at Westminster to petition for his release. MacSwiney's body lay in state in Southwark Cathedral while 30,000 mourners passed by.[2] After the cathedral was severely damaged by an incendiary bomb during World War II, the Irish helped defray the cost of rebuilding. A plaque in St. Patrick's Chapel reads:

This Chapel of St. Patrick is the generous gift of the people of Ireland, a tribute of grateful affection to Archbishop Peter Amigo, and in particular to recall his receiving in honour the body of Terence MacSwiney Lord Mayor of Cork which rested in this cathedral 27-28 October 1920, before burial in his native land."[3]

The Terence MacSwiney commemoration Mass, sponsored by the London Cork Association, is held each year in the St. George's Cathedral on the Sunday nearest to October 25th, MacSwiney's date of death.[4]

Amigo founded the John Fisher School for boys in 1929, originally at Duppas Hill.[5] In 1938, in recognition of Amigo's golden jubilee, Pope Pius XI conferred on him the personal title of Archbishop.[6] He remained in control of the diocese until his death on 1 October 1949, aged 85.