Malcolm Patrick McMahon

Malcolm Patrick McMahon, OP, KC*HS (born 14 June 1949) is an English Catholic prelate who served as Metropolitan Archbishop of Liverpool from 2014 to 2025. He was Bishop of Nottingham from 2000 to 2014. He is a member of the Dominican Order.

Early life and ministry Malcolm McMahon was born in London, the second of three brothers and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology before working for London Transport. In 1976, he decided upon an ecclesiastical career and joined the Dominican Order. Making his religious profession in December 1977, McMahon studied philosophy at Blackfriars, Oxford and theology at Heythrop College. He was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Basil Hume on 26 June 1982.

He served as chaplain of Leicester Polytechnic for the 1986/7 academic year, whence he served in a London parish. McMahon later became Parish Priest of St Dominic's in Newcastle upon Tyne (1989), and of St Dominic's in Haverstock Hill (1990). He was elected prior provincial of the Dominicans' English Province in both 1992 and 1996. In 2000, he was elected prior of Blackfriars, Oxford.

Episcopal career

Bishop of Nottingham On 7 November 2000, McMahon was appointed Bishop of Nottingham by Pope John Paul II. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 8 December from Bishop James Joseph McGuinness, with Bishops Victor Guazzelli and Patrick O'Donoghue serving as co-consecrators, in the Cathedral Church of St. Barnabas.

McMahon's name had been mentioned as a possible successor to Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as Archbishop of Westminster and to Kevin McDonald as Archbishop of Southwark. He serves as Chair of the Department of Education and Formation of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, Chair of the Catholic Education Service, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Catholic Trust of England & Wales, Ecclesiastical Advisor to the Knights of Saint Columba, and President of the British Section of Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement.

Archbishop of Liverpool On 21 March 2014 Pope Francis appointed Bishop McMahon as the ninth Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Liverpool. Archbishop McMahon was enthroned at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King on 1 May 2014, the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, before a congregation of three thousand.

During his tenure in Liverpool, in 2017 and 2018, Archbishop McMahon ordained priests for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter in St Mary's Church, Warrington, utilising the pre-1970 rite of ordination.

Pope Francis accepted Archbishop McMahon's resignation on 5 April 2025.

Views Archbishop McMahon has said that there is no doctrinal reason preventing priests from having wives:

He considers clerical celibacy as a "spiritual necessity". In a pastoral letter read in the Diocese of Nottingham on Sunday 25 October 2009, then Bishop McMahon said:

He also supports the role of women in Catholic Church, but is against the ordination of women as priests:

In the same pastoral letter, Bishop McMahon said: