Padre Richard Downes
Padre Richard Downes is retired British Army chaplain living Hameln and working in a voluntary capacity amongst expatriate English speaking people and British military veterans in Germany. He has spent all of his working life in or around the military. Prior to ordination he served for ten years as a soldier in both the infantry and Royal Military Police. It was during this time that his faith came alive through studying the bible and with the encouragement of his chaplains received his call to full-time Christian work. He is an ordained priest in the Church of England having completed three years ordination training at Saint John’s College Cranmer Hall in Durham University in 1994 where he met his wife Siân who is a trained teacher. They married on the completion of Richard’s training and went on to serve together in their first church in Sunderland in the North East of England. After three years in civilian Parish ministry he and Siân felt a call to military life once again. Richard was commissioned as an Army Chaplain in 1997, going on to serve in that capacity for 25 years during which time he saw operational duty in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Richard became a senior chaplain in the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department leading chaplaincy teams in a recruit training establishment, operational brigade and garrison, director of a military retreat and conference centre in Germany and finally was Chaplain to the remaining forces in Sennelager Paderborn prior to his retirement in 2021. Richard has continued his service to soldiers young and old in his capacity as Chaplain to Germany District of the Royal British Legion and as a voluntary worker and trustee with Military Missions International (MMI) which supports chaplains and Christian soldiers in Armies across the globe.
Richard and Siân have four children. As well as skiing, Richard is a keen walker, gardener, fisherman and musician, playing both accordion and guitar well enough to get by.