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Len Black

Scottish Roman Catholic Priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ6521684 ↗
Source-derived summary

Leonard Albert Black (born 19 March 1949) is a Roman Catholic priest in Scotland and a member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. He was formerly an Anglican priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Early life and education

Black was born on 19 March 1949. He was educated at the Bernard Gilpin Society, in Durham, England; this was an organisation that helped men achieve the academic qualifications required to study for ordination. He then trained for ordination at the Edinburgh Theological College.

Ordained ministry

Anglicanism

Black was ordained in the Scottish Episcopal Church as a deacon in 1972 and as a priest in 1973. He was curate at St Margaret of Scotland, Aberdeen and then chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee. From 1977 to 1980 he was priest in charge of St Ninian's, Aberdeen, and then became rector of St Michael & All Angels, Inverness, and St John the Evangelist, Inverness in 1980.

In 1987, Black resigned as rector of St John the Evangelist, Inverness, to take up a part-time appointment as Religious and Community Programmes producer at Moray Firth Radio in Inverness. He also served as Area Chaplain for Scotland of the Actors Church Union from 1987 to 2003 and synod clerk of the Moray, Ross and Caithness from 1992 to 2003.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Len Black” is scottish Roman Catholic Priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Black, Scottish and Roman, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 1972, 1973, 1977—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949-03-19. For this dossier, Black, Scottish and Roman is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “scottish Roman Catholic Priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6521684. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1972, 1973 and 1977.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Len Black” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.