2021 Red Mass moved to Christ the King

Published: September 21, 2021

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor will celebrate the 2021 Red Mass at noon, Friday, Oct. 1, at Christ the King Church in Little Rock. This event is sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society of Arkansas, which is a Catholic organization for attorneys, judges, law professors and others working in the legal profession. The Mass is celebrated each year to seek God's blessing and guidance in the administration of justice.

All judges, law professors and government officials are invited to participate in the procession of the Mass. Later, Bishop Taylor will present the St. Thomas More Award posthumously to Tim Boe who died in 2020. He was a St. Thomas More Society board member and partner of Rose Law Firm. 

An informal luncheon will follow the Mass in the Family Life Center. The deadline to register for the luncheon is Tuesday, Sept. 28. The box lunch will be $15 per person and may be purchased online or mailed with fee to the address provided. For more information, contact Connie Phillips, chair of the Red Mass committee, at stmsarkansas@gmail.com.

Last year, this Mass was only available online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally it is celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Andrew, but this year it was moved to a larger church to allow participants to spread out to provide greater safety during the ongoing pandemic. This Mass will also be livestreamed on the parish YouTube channel.

The Arkansas chapter of the St. Thomas More Society began in 1999 with the first Red Mass in the Diocese of Little Rock. Each year it coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Red Mass the first week in October. To learn more, read Arkansas Catholic.

The organization's patron saint, St. Thomas More, was a lawyer, literary scholar and chancellor of England who refused to approve King Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage and establishment of the Church of England. He was beheaded for high treason in 1535. His feast day is June 22.