Dr Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen and an outspoken critic of the Church of England, has joined the Catholic Church. 

He will be received into full communion by the Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, this Sunday, having until now been a missionary bishop to the UK and Europe within the Christian Episcopal Church. 

He had formerly been an Anglican and chaplain to the Queen until resigning in 2017 after he publicly criticised the reading of the Koran in St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow. 

He had been a chaplain to the Queen since 2008, and a member of the Church of England's General Synod for 20 years when he stepped down. 

Bishop Davies welcomed his conversion, telling the Church Militant website that it was "very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of the canonization of Saint John Henry Newman."

"It has been a special joy to accompany Gavin Ashenden in the final steps of a long journey to be at home in the Catholic Church," he said.

"I am conscious of the witness which Ashenden has given in the public square to the historic faith and values on which our society has been built. I pray that this witness will continue to be an encouragement to many." 

Explaining his decision to join the Catholic fold, Dr Ashenden said he believed that Anglicanism in the UK was capitulating "to the increasingly intense and non-negotiable demands of a secular culture."

"I watched as the Church of England suffered a collapse of inner integrity as it swallowed wholesale secular society's descent into a post-Christian culture," he said.

Dr Ashenden said that the Church of England was now "rooted in the values of secularized culture rather than the bedrock of biblical, apostolic and patristic tradition."

He added that he did not see any means within the current Church "to draw orthodox Anglicans together in ecclesial unity".