NO-ONE can accuse Swindon's most senior Catholic priest of a lack of graft during his 40-year association with the town.

Monsignor Richard Twomey, 65, first came to Holy Rood Church after qualifying as a priest in 1962, and has baptised around 2,000 babies in that time.

He has also joined something like 1,200 people in holy matrimony and given about 700 people their final send-off since coming to Swindon from Ireland.

Last night a service was held at Holy Rood to celebrate his long association with the town.

"I never get fed up with it, especially the baptisms," he says.

"They are one of the real highlights of my job and all these young children help keep the church alive!"

Although he acknowledges that some people now see the church as less and less important to their daily lives, he believes the outlook for Swindon's Catholic community is still reasonably healthy. "A certain secularisation has crept in, and perhaps to some the church may not be as important as it was," he says.

"But we are always ready to help in whatever way we can."

Attendances at Catholic services in Holy Rood Church have more or less stayed constant in the past few years, thanks to new recruits from far-flung lands, such as Goa in southern India.

"We have quite a big immigrant community coming into the town from Goa, and that must have swelled our congregation by 200-odd," Monsignor Twomey says.

"They work mainly in service industries, and are a very hard working and a very spiritual people.

"They have brought a lovely new dimension to the congregation."

When the then Father Twomey first arrived in Swindon from his native Cork 40 years ago, Irish immigrants formed a big part of the church congregation.

Now their sons and grandsons play less of a role in their local church, although the presence of so many second and third generation of Irish, Poles and Italians still helps keep congregations healthy.

In spite of spending eight years working as a parish priest in Bristol and Chippenham in the 1970s and 1980s, Monsignor Twomey's 32 years spent working in Swindon since the 1960s have enabled him to chart the social and economic changes that have happened to the town.

He remembers being able to cross the Whale Bridge over the old Wilts and Berks Canal in what is now Farnsby Street, and drive straight into Regent Street, long before the Brunel Centre, the David Murray John Tower, and a pedestrianised town centre appeared.

He was also a witness to the policy of expansion pursued after the war by town leaders, who believed that Swindon had become too dependent on the railway and needed to open up new areas of work.

"Swindon was a great railway town in the beginning of my time here but it was just starting to develop in other ways, because at the time a lot of people were starting to move here from London," he says.

"Then we had the motor industry come in, which took over from the railway, and then came the hi-tech and computer firms that we have nowadays."

Holy Rood Church has also moved with the times during Monsignor Twomey's years there, as the old church building was extended southwards in the 1970s, turning it into a much bigger and brighter place to worship.

But in spite of all these changes, the Monsignor reckons the people of Swin-don have remained pretty much unchanged over the past 40 years.

"I've always found the people of Swindon very friendly and very supportive that would be my main impression of the town," he says.

"When I say that, I mean the whole community, not just the Catholics here."

Monsignor Twomey was appointed to his current rank in 1997 in recognition of his work with local schools, as the Catholic Church's representative on Wiltshire and Swindon's education committees.

Standing up for children in the parish has sometimes involved him in con-troversy, most memorably last year, when he attacked plans to hand out condoms to under-age children in our schools.

The proposals were being considered in a bid to bring down the town's notor-ious teenage pregnancy rate, the highest in the South West of England and one of the highest in Western Europe.

If contraceptives are to be given to under-age children without their parents' consent, then this cannot be legal and is highly prov-ocative," he said.

"This part of the strategy is promoting promiscuity, not preventing it.

"If this goes ahead, it will seem that the council is giving the official stamp of approval to the permissive society and free sexual activity among young children."

A year on, the Monsignor says his stance has not changed.

"I still think it that it wasn't right to be giving contraception to people who are under age, particularly without their parents' knowledge. That's something I still believe," he says.

He knows Swindon has a massive task in cutting its level of teenage mothers, but he is hopeful that our young people will work out that abstinence is the best way to avoid having babies.

"I read an interesting article in the Evening Advertiser recently that that said children were beginning to realise contraception is not the answer," he says.

"We have to educate people that there is such a thing as abstinence."

When not struggling with important spiritual or social issues, Monsignor Twomey likes to get away from it all with a round of golf at his club near Abingdon.

"My handicap used to be 13, but the years have begun to catch up with me, and now it's not so good," he says.

He also likes a flutter on the horses, and is a regular visitor to nearby race courses at Newbury and Wincanton.

The Monsignor also likes to visit his family in Ireland as often as he can, but is not contemplating moving there when he finally hangs up his robes in just over four years' time. "I hope to lay down the mantle at 70 and enjoy my retirement, and I'd like to stay in the area," he says.

"I will have been here more than 40 years and I have always considered Swindon my second home."