 Since 2012 he has been a priest in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a personal ordinariate for former Anglicans within the Roman Catholic Church in the United Kingdom.Mercer was educated at Grey High School, Port Elizabeth and St Paul’s Theological College, Grahamstown.Ordained as a deacon in 1959 and as a priest a year later, his first post was as a curate at Hillside, Bulawayo.