Wilf celebrated seventy-seven years as an altar server on Christmas Day 2017. He received well-deserved letters of thanks and congratulations from both Bishop Patrick McKinney and Cardinal Vincent Nichols as well as from the National Director of the Guild of St. Stephen.
A similar article to those below appeared in the March 2016 edition of The Catholic News.
Article in the Loughborough Echo on 14th January 2015
Wilf Doyle
During the early months of the Second World War, Wilf was evacuated from his native Sheffield and went to live in rural Leicestershire. He started serving on the altar at St. Gregory and Saint Alban’s in Sileby during 1940. He must have proved to be a bit too much for the rural community, because after a couple of years they shipped him back to Sheffield where he continued his ministry at St. Marie’s, now the cathedral of the Hallam Diocese. In 1945 Wilf was enrolled in the Guild of St. Stephen and remained at St. Marie’s for twenty-two years. In 1964 he moved to Leicester and served at the Immaculate Conception until 1984 when he moved to Markfield and became M.C. at the Sacred Heart in Leicester. He remained there until 1998 when he moved back to the church where he had served fifty-eight years earlier. Since then he has been responsible for training generations of altar servers, providing a glowing example to the young servers of today, apart from the fact that he is a Sheffield United season ticket holder and a purveyor of toe-curling jokes. He is one of small select band of servers who have been awarded the gold medal of the Guild of St. Stephen.
(Thanks to Dickie Bird for the majority of the above text)
During the early months of the Second World War, Wilf was evacuated from his native Sheffield and went to live in rural Leicestershire. He started serving on the altar at St. Gregory and Saint Alban’s in Sileby during 1940. He must have proved to be a bit too much for the rural community, because after a couple of years they shipped him back to Sheffield where he continued his ministry at St. Marie’s, now the cathedral of the Hallam Diocese. In 1945 Wilf was enrolled in the Guild of St. Stephen and remained at St. Marie’s for twenty-two years. In 1964 he moved to Leicester and served at the Immaculate Conception until 1984 when he moved to Markfield and became M.C. at the Sacred Heart in Leicester. He remained there until 1998 when he moved back to the church where he had served fifty-eight years earlier. Since then he has been responsible for training generations of altar servers, providing a glowing example to the young servers of today, apart from the fact that he is a Sheffield United season ticket holder and a purveyor of toe-curling jokes. He is one of small select band of servers who have been awarded the gold medal of the Guild of St. Stephen.
(Thanks to Dickie Bird for the majority of the above text)
The article below appeared in the November 1994 edition of "Africa", the magazine of St. Patrick's Missions, when Wilf was Master of Ceremonies at the Sacred Heart Parish in Leicester.
