It’s a weekday afternoon at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham, and I’ve just been introduced to Fr Cosslett...and Fr Cosslett. And no, they’re not brothers. Fr Ronald is Fr Dominic’s dad; and they both agree that yes, it is indeed very unusual for a father and his son to both be ordained Roman Catholic priests.

‘I wouldn’t use the word ‘unique’ because I think it’s dangerous to do that,’ says Fr Dominic. ‘But there aren’t many priests in our situation, that’s true.’

But both priests had  long felt their hearts belonged to the Roman Catholic churchA few years ago, both Fr Dominic and Fr Ronald were priests in the Church of England – and there, father and son ordained pairs were nothing out of the ordinary. But both priests had long felt their hearts belonged to the Roman Catholic church – and after much soul-searching, first Fr Cosslett senior and then Fr Cosslett junior resigned their posts in the Anglican church, converted to Catholicism, and then studied for, and were eventually ordained into, the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Today Fr Dominic is secretary to Archbishop Bernard Longley in Birmingham (which is why we’re meeting at St Chad’s), while Fr Ronald is parish priest at St Joseph’s Church in Darlaston near Walsall. Theirs is a close family, so there are plenty of get-togethers with Fr Ronald’s wife Kath, and the couple’s daughter Vanessa and her family. And just as they always have, father and son spend time chatting about the work they share – only these days it’s issues around the Catholic, rather than the Anglican, priesthood that occupy their thoughts.

Fr Ronald, who’s 73, grew up in Wales and still speaks with a Welsh accent. He worked for a steel company before deciding, in his twenties, to become an Anglican priest – inspired, interestingly, by his Catholic grandmother. ‘I grew up the child of a Catholic and an Anglican, so really I should have been raised a Catholic but somehow it didn’t happen like that,’ he says. ‘But my grandmother, who was a Catholic, always used to talk to me about the Church, and especially about the Rosary. I think she instilled a love of the Catholic church that never left me.’

By the time Fr Ronald was ordained in 1970, he and Kath were already parents to Vanessa; and two years later, Dominic arrived. The family spent the next few years living in different parts of the country as Fr Ronald worked in one parish after another. ‘It was an interesting childhood,’ says Fr Dominic. ‘When you grow up in a vicarage you see the work of a priest in the round, it’s not romanticised in any way. ‘In 1991, his parents decided to make the move back to Wales to be near his ageing grandmother; and at the same time, Dominic went to study theology in Lampeter. ‘While I was there I toyed with the idea of a career in the police force, or even as a rugby player,’ he says. ‘But eventually, I decided to follow my father into the Church.’

Fr Ronald remembers how proud he was of his son when he was ordained into the Anglican church in 1996, and then became a curate in a church outside Swansea. But meanwhile, he was struggling with his own worries about whether to remain in the Anglican church or to convert to Catholicism. ‘At one point Kath told me she felt the Catholic Church was where she ought to be, and I said to her that she was welcome to make the move. But she wouldn’t do it without me.’ Eventually, he went to see Archbishop Vincent Nichols. ‘He was very generous, and he said if that was what I wanted to do, he would accept it,’ says Fr Ronald. ‘So I decided to make the move at last; but first I had to tell my parishioners.’ Standing up in the pulpit to give them his news wasn’t, he admits, an easy thing to do. ‘Some of them felt I was abandoning them, and I suppose in a way I was abandoning them,’ he says. ‘But I had to do what in my heart was right.’

Under special arrangements drawn up by the Vatican, married men who were formerly Anglican priests are allowed to seek ordination in the Catholic church after converting – but, as Fr Ronald points out, there were no guaranteesUnder special arrangements drawn up by the Vatican, married men who were formerly Anglican priests are allowed to seek ordination in the Catholic church after converting – but, as Fr Ronald points out, there were no guarantees. ‘Looking back I can hardly believe I could make this journey – it was only with God’s grace that I could do it,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know what the future held, it could only be one step at a time. There was no certainty that, after becoming a Catholic, I could go on to become a Catholic priest.’

Fr Ronald was received into the Catholic Church in 2002. Fr Dominic, who was by this stage running his own Anglican parish in Birmingham, says he understood why he was making the move, but didn’t yet feel called to follow him. ‘Both dad and I were always on the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican church, and what that meant was that we felt part of the wider Catholic communion and hope that one day the Anglican church will be part of the Catholic communion once again. For both of us, we were working towards unity with Rome – and what my father had realised, and what I later came to realise as well, was that the direction the Anglican church was taking was taking us further away from, rather than closer to, the church of Rome.’ Both priests stress this wasn’t an issue merely about women priests. ‘People so often assume that, but it’s wrong,’ says Fr Dominic. ‘Women became priests in the Anglican church many years ago, but we stayed in the Anglican church at that point.’

Once he’d become a Catholic, Fr Ronald studied at Oscott College seminary near Birmingham, and was ordained into the Catholic priesthood at St Mary and All Angels church in Aldridge in July 2005. ‘It was a wonderful day,’ he says. ‘And an emotional day too. The first Mass I celebrated was a very moving experience .’

The family joke at the time, he says, was what his Catholic grandmother would have made of it all. ‘We used to say she must have turned in her grave when I became an Anglican priest – and then she turned back again when I eventually became a Catholic priest,’ he laughs.

“But my grandmother, who was a Catholic, always used to talk to me about the Church, and especially about the Rosary.  I think she instilled a love of the Catholic church that never left me”Watching from the sidelines, Fr Dominic could see the extent of his parents’ joy at having made the move they had hoped to make for so long. ‘There had been this sense of a burden, and now there was lightness and a fresh enthusiasm,’ he says. It made a big impression on him – but it wasn’t until he joined a Catholic pilgrimage to Lourdes with a group from Birmingham archdiocese that he decided that was where his future lay also. ‘A pilgrimage is often a microcosm for life, and this was a microcosm of the archdiocese,’ he remembers. ‘Everyone was so welcoming and I could see it was where I belonged.’

Like his father before him, Fr Dominic had the difficult task of explaining his decision to his Anglican flock – before being received into the Catholic Church and then spending a year at the British seminary in Valladolid in northern Spain, and then studying at Oscott before he was ordained in December 2008. And by this stage, his sister Vanessa and her family had also become Catholics – so after many years of searching, the entire Cosslett clan were Catholics. ‘There’s a real sense of contentment amongst us now,’ says Fr Dominic. ‘We all faced many challenges, but we took our time and we all did what we had to do with our eyes open. We all realise that the Church, no church, is about perfection – but it’s about striving for perfection, and that’s what we feel we can do inside the Catholic church.’

Both father and son say they continue to hold some of the riches of the Anglican tradition in their hearts. ‘Making the move we did was hard – it wasn’t easy to leave the church we’d been part of for so long,’ says Fr Ronald. ‘But today we have a contentment, both of us, that I think neither of us had ever experienced before.’