At 6pm on Friday 5 June at Holy Rosary Parish, Aintree, a special Mass will take place. It is a Mass to celebrate the diamond jubilee of one of the Archdiocese of Liverpool’s longest-serving priests, Monsignor John Butchard.

Mgr John was 24 when he was ordained at St Joseph’s, Upholland, on 4 June 1966. One of four priests ordained that day, he recalls that “we were only allowed to have six of our family and friends as guests”. The next day, he celebrated his first Mass at his home parish of St Anne’s, Ormskirk.

A diamond jubilee is, inevitably, a moment for reflection, yet Mgr John is wary of being “self-indulgent”. Rather, he will “try to look at my life in terms of the people I've lived with and worked with, because they've been the support that's kept me going.”

There is much to look back on, starting with his first posting to St Luke’s, Whiston. “There were four priests in the house, including myself, so it's a very different experience to nowadays,” he notes. “What I really enjoyed about my time there was being chaplain to Whiston Hospital.”

From there, in 1969, he began a 21-year spell at St Joseph’s, Upholland – first teaching in the junior seminary and then, for 16 years, serving as bursar. “I entered into 21 years of work in various ways as the college changed from being a seminary to being a wider resource for training the people of God,” says Mgr John, who has especially fond memories of Upholland’s “small residential domestic staff” – a group who, as he explains, had “spent their early years in the care of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and formed a little community. And I, as it were, was the lead person in that little community.”

It was towards the end of his time at Upholland that he became a Monsignor, yet he remembers that period as particularly challenging. “The last years were very hard because all the work that made it Upholland had changed out of all recognition.”

The subsequent chapters of his priesthood were spent in parishes. “I went to St Joseph, Penketh, as parish priest from 1990 through to 2000,” he recalls. “I then went to Holy Rosary and remained there until I retired in 2016. Both were wonderful parishes, with dedicated people living their lives as Catholic Christians. They were a great joy to be with. It's the people of the parish that give fulfilment to what you're doing.”

A central thread running through Mgr Butchard’s years as a priest is Lourdes. He has not missed a Liverpool Archdiocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes since 1968 and was pilgrimage director for 25 years from 1991. “I worked in every possible job there was over the years. And at the same time, it was a personal devotion to a place I'd come to love very much.”

In his view, the “pilgrimage experience” offers a vital opportunity for growth. “It widens your view, widens your experience of people, widens your contacts, and so deepens your faith and your prayer,” he affirms.

Today, at 84, Mgr Butchard still “finds great fulfilment in covering for priests in various parishes” and he believes that “the beauty of being a secular priest is you never know what the next day will bring in terms of somebody wanting your help.”

This leads to a final reflection on how the priest’s role has changed over the 60 years since his ordination. “My years of training coincided with the Second Vatican Council,” he observes. “New emphasis was given to seeing church membership in terms of ‘You are the people of God, a royal priesthood’. I’ve always tried to put that into practice with all the people I’ve come into contact with, while still holding onto the value of being a ministerial priest within the people of God.

“If I compare it with when I was first ordained, in 1966 the ordained priest at St Luke’s, Whiston, did many of the works within the community which are now done by commissioned members of the people of God such as readers, Eucharistic ministers, catechists. We’re still developing those ideas, and this is what gives me hope for our onward journey in faith.”