A historic Mass took place in Winchester College on Sunday when for the first time since the Reformation, a Catholic bishop celebrated the service in Chapel.

The Rt Revd Crispian Hollis, Bishop of Portsmouth, was joined in the celebration by the Bishop of Winchester, Rt Revd Michael-Scott-Joynt, Visitor to the college.

A former Bishop of Winchester, Colin James and former Bishop of Salisbury, Rt Revd John Baker, were also present.

Concelebrating the Mass was Monsignor Peter Doyle, parish priest of St Peter's, Winchester, and four Wykehamist Catholic priests. The three Anglican chaplains from the school also took part.

Well before the service started on Sunday evening, the 14th Century Chapel was filled with members of the Anglican and Catholic communities, who joined in the important act of unity.

Bishop Hollis, who was given a warm welcome by the senior chaplain, Revd Robert Ferguson, focused in his homily on what he clearly saw would be the eventual unity of the Anglican and Catholic churches.

There was a time, he suspected, when Catholics would have seen Sunday evening's event with "covert triumphalism, coming back to something we owned before", when the two communities were seen very much in confrontational terms.

"We are moving away from these sort of attitudes. Tonight we are not reverting to some past in which nothing has changed. I believe that's not the case. I believe we are now on a path of convergence. We can't go back to where we were because we're not resting there, we must move forward."

The bishop said that at one time, when Catholics prayed for the conversion of England, it meant conversion to Catholicism.

"But if we pray for the conversion of England now it's because as Christians today we are aware of the need for Christian values and the Christian gospel to be heard, not in the exclusive voice of one denomination but in the combined voices of those who share so much together. The conversion of England is a missionary task for all of us. We are living in the most secular state and evangelising it is something we strive to do together."

The last Catholic bishop of Winchester, John White, warden and master of the college, was removed during the Reformation by Elizabeth I in 1558, when Wykehamists on both sides of the religious divide gave their lives for their beliefs during this turbulent period.

There is a memorial brass to Bishop White in the chapel, along with the epitaph he composed for himself. During the service, names of the Protestant martyrs were recalled with honour and four first-year boys brought red candles to the altar in memory of the Catholic martyrs.