Culture Tuesdays

Culture Tuesdays – 8 June, 2021

Tuesdays will now be the Cultural Tuesdays on the Morning Show where Fr Toby and Helena will share info about films, sports, music, art and events for the Radio Maria Community.  Join them LIVE every Tuesday from 9 – 9:30am.  It will also be rebroadcast on Tuesday afternoons at 1:30pm and 8:30pm.

A little about Fr Toby Lees:

Fr Toby is the Roman Catholic Chaplain (Strand Campus) at King’s and the assistant priest at Our Lady of the Rosary and St Dominic’s, London.  Fr Toby was born in London, and studied law at Cambridge, going on to be a solicitor for seven years with a city law firm. Whilst working, he started studying Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition at Maryvale Institute, and he knew things were getting serious when he started playing fewer matches for Millwall Rugby Club, so that he could try and get his philosophy essays submitted on time. This didn’t always happen. It was also at Maryvale that he first came across the Dominicans, meeting one Sister and a couple of Friars, and much to his surprise began to think he would like to become one too.

In 2012, he ditched the suit for a habit, and entered the novitiate in Cambridge. After a year’s novitiate, he moved to Blackfriars, Oxford, where he studied philosophy for a further year and then theology for three years. After Oxford, he was sent to Rome for three years (the vow of obedience is sometimes very easy to live out), where he lived at the beautiful Basilica of S.Clemente, and studied for a licence in moral theology at the Angelicum. He wrote his thesis on the passion of sorrow and the vice of acedia in St Thomas Aquinas and what his thought might contribute to a contemporary understanding of depression. His particular academic interest is the crossover between moral theology and psychology. He was ordained a priest a year ago, and has recently moved back to London where he is assigned to the Dominican Priory at the Rosary Shrine, Haverstock Hill.  He is also a hospital chaplain at the Royal Free Hospital.

He loves all sport, but especially rugby and cricket, and he enjoys running and swimming on Hampstead Heath. He also loves real ale, fiction, and pilgrimages, and is always trying to work out a way to walk yet another Camino to Santiago.

To learn more about Our Lady of the Rosary and St Dominic’s, London, please visit:  www.rosaryshrine.co.uk

If you have no idea what a Dominican friar is or what vows they make, you can find out more about Toby and his life in the video below:

Helena, Fr. Toby’s Mother and Fr. Toby

A little About Helena:

Originally a volunteer for Radio Maria England, Helena helped with the original scheduling and became Editorial Assistant, producing the initial programmes on RME.  Currently, she has moved roles to Promoter (Public Relations Director, Volunteer Coordinator) and continues to producer Women Together and present Morning Hymns and The Morning Show.