[9] In 2018–2020, following an investigation of Downside School by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, financial strain on the abbey led to the sale of assets including Renaissance paintings.

[12] In the same week, it was announced that the monks would begin the search for a new home due to "smaller numbers and changing circumstances" rendering the current building unsuitable for the future.

Archbishop Manning presided at the ceremony, and he was accompanied by Bishop Clifford of Clifton, The Bishop of Newport and Menevia, the Cistercian Abbot of Mount St Bernard's, Leicestershire, Monsignor Capel, Monsignor Parfitt, Dr. Neve, the Vicar-General of the Diocese, Dr. Williams, President of Prior Park College, and among the Benedictine clergy, to which Order Downside belongs, was the Very Revd.

At the conclusion of the religious part of the day's proceedings the Benedictine Fathers entertained the visitors, numbering about 200, at a luncheon laid out in the exhibition room of the college.

By degrees they have increased their property to some 350 acres, and are known to have the best cultivated farms in their part of the county of Somerset.In 1925 the unfinished nave was dedicated to those old boys of the school killed in World War I.

[20]To-day, with the full solemnity of Catholic ritual, Downside Abbey, which was commenced more than a half-a-century ago, was consecrated by the Cardinal Prince-Primate of Hungary, Monsignor Seredi, who is one of the Benedictine Members of the Sacred College.

Over 500 priests accepted invitations to attend and among the lay guests were the Lord Mayor of London and leading members of the Roman Catholic community throughout Great Britain.

In honour of the occasion the Abbey Church has been raised by the Pope to the dignity of the Minor Basilica – the first in England – and this confers upon the Abbot the right to wear the Cappa Magna, a long black cloak.

Cardinal Seredi, who directly represented the Pope, consecrated the High Altar and performed the greater part of the consecration of the church, the building of which has cost over £200,000.The church houses the relics of St. Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, an Irish martyr, executed at Tyburn in 1681, who entrusted the disposal of his body to the care of a Benedictine monk of the English Benedictine Congregation.

The Lady chapel is acknowledged as one of the most complete and successful schemes of Sir Ninian Comper,[26] with a reredos and altar furnishings incorporating medieval fragments and a reliquary containing the skull of St Thomas de Cantilupe.

[29] The first pipe organ at Downside was built in 1805 by George Pike England of Tottenham Court Road for the Music Room in Brighton Pavilion;[30] when removed in 1882 (without its original case) to the south transept gallery of the new church, it had 16 stops over two manuals and pedals.

[31] Removed to the parish church of Saint Vigor in nearby Stratton-on-the-Fosse in 1907, it survives today somewhere in America, having been sold following water damage sustained in Stratton in 1969.

Unusually, the casework (designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and carved by Ferdinand Stuflesser of Ortesei in the Italian Tyrol) has no pipe fronts: it is of solid oak with fretwork, but has no roof: consequently, the whole organ speaks up into the transept vaults and is projected down the nave.

The console, a typical Compton luminous stop button affair which faces west from near the crossing down the north side of the nave, is made from timber from HMS Bellerophon, which transported Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo.

[34] An early addition to the site was the small single-storey lodge at the east entrance, built in 1827 in a plain Grecian style, to designs assumed to be by the eminent architect Henry Goodridge.

As with the first phase of the church the architects were A. M. Dunn and E. J. Hansom, and construction is in Bath stone under red tile, in a style described by English Heritage as "collegiate High Victorian".

The west front has three storeys, rising to four at the south end, and a later attic floor; there are four gables and the central entrance is under a half-projecting two-storey octagonal tower with a conical roof.

[44] Since September 2019, the school and the abbey are run by separate trusts as part of reforms overseen by the Charity Commission in the wake of an investigation into child abuse of pupils by monks.

[49] The Abbot responded by apologising to parents and reported that 50 years of confidential school records indicated that four of the monks had faced police action, two had restrictions imposed on them, and one was cleared and returned to monastic life.

Thorough procedures ensure the safe recruitment of staff, and all the necessary checks are carried out...The quality of the pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural education is excellent.

"[53] In November 2017, the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) started to examine evidence of children being targeted for abuse at Downside School, along with another major Catholic school located at Ampleforth Abbey, as part of its investigation into the prevalence of paedophilia in the English Benedictine Congregation and its failures to properly protect young people over many decades.

Father Leo insisted that his decision to make a bonfire of Downside's staff files was prompted by a desire to "get rid of unnecessary old material".

[10] The Abbey and the daily activities of two monks were the subject of Episode 1 of the television series Retreat: Meditations from a Monastery, first shown on BBC Four in October 2017.