Rev'd Dr. Tony Carroll

An interview with Rev'd Dr. Tony Carroll, Chaplain of the Costa del Sol West Anglican Chaplaincy

by Michelle Chaplow

AC: Good morning, Tony. I'd like you to tell our readers what is your mission here, what is your position, and what kind of people are you trying to reach out to in your current role as Chaplain of the Costa del Sol West?

TC: Good morning, Michelle, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to Andalucía.com. My name is Tony Carroll and my title is the Chaplain of the Costa del Sol West Anglican Chaplaincy. It runs from San Pedro area in the east to Sotogrande area in the west. What we're trying to do is two things. Firstly, to serve the Christian community, to provide them with the possibility for worship and prayer in two church settings: one in San Pedro and Nuestra Señora de la Merced in Sotogrande. Both are Catholic churches, and they offer Christians the opportunity to pray, to worship God, and to experience fellowship together.

That's the first and core mission, but because it's the Anglican Chaplaincy, the way of thinking for the Anglican church is that you don't only serve the churchgoers. Part of your role is to be a resource, a connector, an enchufe, as we say here, for people who have any kind of spiritual quest, who are looking for how their life can have more meaning, and to open out conversations to those groups. So the second purpose for the Anglican church here is to walk with people as they ask those big questions.

AC: Many people on the Costa del Sol - and throughout society - go to churches for occasions like baptism, funerals, and marriages. Are you involved in all of those aspects here on the Costa del Sol?

TC: Absolutely; often, for those people who are not churchgoers on a regular basis, that's how they'll come into contact with the Anglican Chaplaincy: for the baptism of their children, for a wedding, for example, also at the end of life, for a funeral. All of those services are what I'd be doing as my weekly work.

AC:  Out of those three, the communions, the marriages and the funerals, with this sector within the Costa del Sol, where are you most involved? Are you doing a lot of weddings, a lot of communions, or more funerals?

TC: Funerals have been important, as older people who came over here many decades ago, now come to the end of their life. That's been an important area of the work; there have been quite a lot of funerals. But also baptisms; I think, as the younger groups come in, they want their children to be baptised. So I've had a number of baptisms here and we’re connecting to those younger groups who are arriving. The weddings, as well, tend to take place in the summer months; they tend to be stacked more towards June/July - they're yet to come. I've only had a couple of those - I arrived in May 2023, so it's quite early days yet. I'm still in my first year of serving here.

AC:  Is your position here as chaplain term-limited?

TC: No it's not, it's open-ended, and that's a change since Brexit happened. Prior to Brexit, Adrian, my predecessor here as the Chaplain of the Costa del Sol West, would have come with a five-year term that could be renewed or not, depending on circumstances. But now, post-Brexit, the appointment is open-ended, so it's unlimited, there's no time limit on it.

AC: That’s very interesting. Going back to what you said about how you hold your services in Catholic churches: is there a fee, and if so, how does that work?

TC: Yes, we pay a rental fee every month to the two different Catholic churches that we use, so that's part of our expenditure - we send that money to the diocesan office monthly.

AC: Do you have limited access to those two churches - is it only on a particular day? Or if you wanted to have an extra service, are they flexible with this?

TC: Yes, they've been very welcoming. If we take, for example, San Pedro Church, we meet in one of their side halls at the moment, and the Catholic priest there, Don Manuel, has been very accommodating. We've also had some joint services, such as a carol service at Christmas, for example, together with the Catholic Church, the German Protestant Church, and the Wave community (English-speaking Evangelical). So, yes, they're very amenable to that, and in Sotogrande too. Because it's such a beautiful church, we typically use that for baptisms following the Sunday service, and also for weddings, which tend to take place during the week.

AC: You’re now the Chaplain of the Costa del Sol West, but can you tell us about your career and how you've ended up here on the Costa del Sol, like many of our readers?

TC I will turn 59 in May of this year; I started out in my religious quest at the age of 22. I joined a Roman Catholic religious order called the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus, and I was with them for 25 years. It's a missionary order, so you're sent here, there, and everywhere. I lived in Spain for a couple of years; I was in Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala; I studied in France, did a doctorate in Germany, and worked in the UK for about 15 years. I taught philosophy and theology at Heythrop College, University of London, and then in around 2013, I left the Roman Catholic church to join the Anglican church and transitioned into becoming an Anglican priest. I worked in Folkestone in the UK, where I was a curate for a time, and then taught at an Anglican priest training college in Mirfield, Yorkshire for five years. That was directly before coming here to the Costa del Sol West in May 2023.

AC: So it's been a religious quest. You have a very impressive CV. Do you speak Spanish?

TC: Yes, I do. I learnt it when I worked with a drug rehabilitation group in the north of Spain called Proyecto Hombre, which was all in Spanish, for two years. It was really hard for the first six months, but in the second year the clouds dispersed and the blue sky came, and I saw and experienced the beauty of speaking Spanish. Then I had a year in Mexico in 2008, and some time in Colombia and Guatemala, and that refreshed it.

So I'm a bit rusty, and a lot of my work is in English, but it's all in there; it just needs to be reactivated steadily. I love Spanish, it’s a beautiful language.

AC: Do you have a family with you or have you come here alone? You've travelled to so many countries, it must be difficult to take your family to all those places.

TC:  I was a celibate Roman Catholic priest until 2013 and so I didn't marry till I was aged 50. I am married to Gisela, who is half-German, half-English.  We don't have any children, it's just the two of us.

AC: I think that that level of support, within a marriage, is very good when you're travelling, arriving in a new country etc. Is the job full-time?

TC: It's a part-time job; a “half-time” job. The way I work it is a priest's working week: six days. I take three days for the chaplaincy work, including Sunday; and on the other days, I teach systematic theology or doctrines at Mirfield theological college in England on Monday; and on Wednesday and Thursday I write. I'm writing a history of philosophy for Bloomsbury Publishing at the moment, and am coming to the end of that project. It is taking rather longer than I'd expected, but hopefully I'll submit the manuscript towards Easter. So my work encompasses writing, teaching, and the core work, which is the chaplaincy, but they're all part of my religious vocation.

AC: Is your wife involved in the religious aspect of your work, or is she in a supportive role?

TC: She's very much in a supportive role, so she will attend when she's here, services in both San Pedro and Sotogrande. Being a vicar's wife means you're always part of conversations that are going on in chaplaincy, whether you like it or not. Gisela’s role is supportive and she's a vital part of my mission here.

AC: In terms of reaching people within the Costa del Sol, not everybody wants to go to church. Do you have plans to try and reach out to a wider generation of people, perhaps the ones that don't want to walk through the church, but who do need spiritual guidance? Are you available to help those people?

Obviously, because it's a part-time role that availability is limited, as you would expect. But yes, I would like my work here to include a dimension of availability to people for whom going to church is not where they are at the moment, or not where they want to be, but who would like to enter into conversations about spiritual questions, the big questions of life. I would like to see whether we could, maybe once a month for example, go to a café or bar in Estepona where  I live, and we could begin to explore ways in which non-churchgoers, but people who consider themselves to be spiritual and are seeking answers in these areas, would like to enter into broader conversations. But that's just an idea - I'd be interested to see whether people give feedback on this interview, to see what might suit them, what might serve them in that purpose.

AC: Yes, and it would be an interesting idea for us to provide a link within this interview, so that any anybody who is interested in having a dialogue with you, or attending an event such as one of these round tables that you're talking about, would be able to reach out and connect.

TC: Yes, that would be great. The Anglican Chaplaincy website is called Costa Church, which is easy to remember - you can find contact details on that too.

AC: Now I'm going to move on to Andalusia. When you first received the news that you were coming to this part of the world, what were your initial thoughts?

TC: How beautiful this part of the world is - it's stunning, isn't it? It's the mountains and the sea, which we all dream about living near to. So my first thought was, what a great gift and an opportunity it is to be here. The second thing I thought was, how wonderful to be in this part of Spain because of its rich cultural heritage - the whole question of Islam in Spain, the mix of cultures, the philosophers and the thinkers, the theologians who've lived here in Andalucia. It's extremely rich culturally, and I'm a philosopher-theologian by background, so I'm particularly interested in that cultural side of the region. One of the great historic witnesses of Andalusia is that different religious traditions, particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, can enter into constructive dialogues with each other. It doesn't have to be antagonistic; it can be mutually enriching, and that's the history of Andalusia.

AC: Within this beautiful region there are many amazing places to visit and places where you can connect with your inner self. Are there any particular beauty spots or places where you’ve visited in Andalusia, and thought that this was magical and you'd like to return? Or can you advise our readers on a place which you have found especially beautiful, whether it was naturally so, or it meant something to you personally?

TC: We are spoilt for choice here, and I suppose as a newbie, I'm just sticking my toes into those waters. But if I was to single out one place that has been particularly beautiful for me, it would be Estepona. This is where I live - I often watch the sunset and sunrise in Estepona - and what I love about this part of the world is the panorama that you can see to the east and west. I get such a kick from seeing the Rock of Gibraltar to the west in the morning and even more so from seeing the Moroccan coastline beyond it. There's something about this frontier area between Europe and North Africa, which is incredibly exciting, and watching the North African coastline appear out of the haze in the morning is one of the great gifts of this part of the world and of its beauty.

AC: We have a lot of traditions and customs here in Andalucia, especially the religious traditions of Semana Santa, all the events leading up to Christmas, and the summer fairs. Which is your favourite Andalusian tradition?

TC: Again, there are so many, aren't there? From the experience of being here last December, Christmas time was beautiful. I had a sense of the great effort that goes into putting the lights up, for example. I'm sure that many of your readers went to Malaga to see the lights over Christmas and some of the music that accompanies them.

It’s a great opportunity for the secular and religious worlds to meet and to celebrate this time of year. The other aspect (obviously I haven't been here for it yet) is Holy Week or Semana Santa, which is particularly important in this part of the world. The fraternities and co-fraternities, and all that organisation that goes on is extraordinary - how much time and effort people put into it. So obviously Christmas and Easter time are the periods of the year where the religious festivals come into their full glory.

AC: You arrived in May 2023, so you weren't here for Easter week last year?

TC: My first Easter week here was in 1994, when I came down to Alicante from Bilbao and took part in the processions or watched them. All those statues being carried, and to see how full of pride the people carrying these statues are, is quite impressive.

AC: Semana Santa is almost gaining in popularity - in many parts of the world the church is declining. I think the congregations in Spain are also declining, but Semana Santa, with all of its glory, seems to be continually growing. I believe that there are even waiting lists to carry pasos and to be a Nazareno in many of the larger cities. I know that here in Estepona, for anybody that's involved in within the Hermandades, it's not only the actual day - it's a whole year of activities and a lot of fellowship and friendships formed within the build-up to Semana Santa. There will be some fantastic processions in Estepona.

If you were going to have a secret escape in Andalusia, where would you like to go to?

TC: I like to go into the mountains, between Gaucín and the area surrounding the town. I find them particularly beautiful, so I would find a secret hideaway in that area. Certainly, for me, it would be the mountains to get away from it all.

AC: Do you find yourself meditating - are you a person who believes in meditation? is it something you do as your daily practice? Do you find yourself naturally connecting and meditating or is it something like a discipline?

TC: Very much so - from my early days [as a Christian priest] I've had close contact with various Buddhist traditions, and I've had times of retreat in Buddhist monasteries in different places. I have developed my own practice of Christian mindfulness, which integrates the silence and stillness of the Eastern sitting traditions with embedding oneself in the richness of the Christian scriptures. I've done that for nearly 40 years now, so it's been a long journey, and I’m still very much involved in retreats for Christians and other religious traditions as ways in which they can come to taste and see the beauty of the Lord.

AC: Going back to living in this area, do you have a favourite restaurant, bar, or coffee shop?

TC: We mainly cook at home, because it is quite expensive to eat out - you're not paid a lot when you're a chaplain, so we don't have huge amounts of money. However we do have one restaurant where we go for the set menu - we discovered it when we were out for a walking trip with the German Christian community here. It's called Venta García - a wonderful set menu for about 17 euros, in a beautiful quiet location. That's our secret escape restaurant.

AC: Andalucia has over 700 white villages - could you pick out one that you find particularly charming?

TC: So far, Gaucín has been one, and I am particularly impressed by the various artistic exhibitions that we've come across there. We went some months ago and saw an art show related to breast cancer – there were various portraits and sculptures, images related to the disease, and it was used as a charity event to raise funds.

I found that Gaucín, as well as being a beautiful place, takes its social responsibilities seriously and is closely connected to a number of charities. We have bought calendars there connected to various charities, so I think when art and social responsibility come together, you're onto a winning formula.

AC: Andalucia has so many festivals - which would you say would be your favourite?

TC: I would imagine that the Semana Santa will be, so I'm really looking forward to immersing ourselves in that this year. We're going to have our own events as well - a Way of the Cross with the German Protestant Church at Santo Cristo del Calvario Church in Marbella on Good Friday. On Maundy Thursday, as we call Holy Thursday in English, we're going to have a celebration in our Chaplaincy House. But obviously Easter Sunday is a huge event here, so all those events will be beautiful.

AC: In terms of Andalucian gastronomy, what is your favourite dish?

TC: There are so many - again, it's hard to narrow it down. I love lentils - I'm not vegetarian myself, but we like to eat as little meat as we can. As well as pulses, I love simple things locally grown like tomatoes and avocados - in fact we have some avocado farmers in our church congregation in Sotogrande. Local produce, simply cooked, is probably my favourite.

AC: The final question: what five words would you use to describe what Andalucia means to you?

TC: Beauty, culture, people, sunsets, and that one word, flowers.

AC: Thank you very much for your time, Tony, and we wish you all the best with the chaplaincy. I'm sure that you've got great plans, and it's good to know that you're not term-limited, that you're here to stay and a part of the community. I'm sure that many of our readers will appreciate that.