The Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen celebrated 50 years as a priest with a Solemn Evening Mass in the city’s St Mary’s Cathedral on Wednesday.

Bishop Peter A Moran, 73, has been Bishop of Aberdeen since 2003. He is also the President of SCIAF (Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) and of the Scottish Bishops’ Commission for Justice and Peace, and is the Scottish Bishops’ representative on the European Bishops body COMECE.

As Bishop of Aberdeen he is the spiritual head of some 25,000 Catholics across most of the Northeast of Scotland, from Stonehaven to Unst in Shetland.

Bishop Moran said: “Foremost in my mind today is gratitude to God, to my parents, and to the people whom I have served during the last fifty years as a priest and during the last five as a bishop.”

Born in Glasgow in 1935 and educated at St Aloysius College in that city, Bishop Peter Moran then spent seven years at the Pontifical Scots College, Rome, where he graduated PhL and STL from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was ordained as a priest in Rome on 19 March 1959.

He has lived and worked in the north-east of Scotland for the last 45 years, half of that time on the staff of Blairs College, near Aberdeen. He is a graduate of the University of Glasgow and also a graduate (MEd) of the University of Aberdeen.