George Hay was keen to have a post as a surgeon on a naval ship, but becoming a Catholic barred him from that, but he secured an appointment as surgeon on a trading vessel. While in London he met Bishop Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, England’s equivalent of what Hay was to become in Scotland. He persuaded Hay to apply for the Priesthood, and so he became a student at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, where he was to meet John Geddes and begin a friendship which was to last half a century – two very different men in background and temperament but who were to benefit the Church in Scotland hugely in their lifetime and beyond.