BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

For a change of focus, the ecumenical side of the papal visit, particularly the events involving the Church of England.


Pope Benedict XVI to attend
Abbey service of evening Prayer
From the official site of




From left, the Abbey's main facade; tomb of St. Edward within; 13th-cent. depiction of St. Edward; and the Abbey's nave. Photogrpahy within the Abbey is strictly forbidden, so available photos are limited to the few official photogrpahs available online.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will attend a Service of Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey during his visit to England and Scotland in September 2010.

The Abbey service at 6.15pm on Friday 17 September will be the only ecumenical service of the Papal Visit.

The Pope will attend the Abbey service after a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, at Lambeth Palace and an address to a gathering of political and civil society at Westminster Hall.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr John Sentamu and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, together with church leaders from many denominations, will join His Holiness at the Abbey service.

The Pope will be greeted at the Abbey’s west gate by the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, who will escort him to the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in the Nave, where His Holiness will pray for peace.

During the Service of Evening Prayer the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury will each give an Address from the Sacrarium. They will both pray at the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor, His Grace for Church and State and His Holiness for Christian unity. They will give a joint Blessing from the High Altar.

The Abbey will be full, with a congregation of more than 2000. Attendance is by invitation. The Abbey will ensure that the congregation is as inclusive as possible, by extending invitations via ecumenical groups and Christian denominations across the United Kingdom.

Those individuals identified by their church or organisation will be given the details of how to apply online. There will be strict security surrounding the visit with screening of applicants.

The service will be televised live by the BBC and the Order of Service will be posted in advance on the Abbey website to enable television viewers to follow the proceedings.

What is little known and noted is that the formal name of Westminster Abbey is the Collegiate Church of St. Peter's at Westminster, which makes it significant also for the Successor of Peter. The Abbey complex is a UNESCO World heritage site.



‘It is good that the Pope is coming’,
says the Anglican dean of Westminster Abbey
By Huw Twiston Davies

12 August 2010


View of the Abbey from the London Eye (giant ferris wheel built to mark the year 2000). Big Ben on the Towers of the Houses of Parliament is in left foreground.


The Very Rev Dr John Hall hopes that Pope Benedict will have an ‘opportunity to talk about the centrality of Christianity within our understanding of the nation’.

What do you feel is the significance of the Pope visiting Westminster Abbey in particular, rather than another prominent Anglican place of worship such as St Paul’s?
In 1982, Pope John Paul II of course came to Canterbury and so he met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. That was a very significant and important occasion.

That was a pastoral visit. This is a state visit, so he’s coming partly as head of state, as well as head of the Roman Catholic Church, and every head of state is invited to come and lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown warrior.

So actually both heads of state on state visits and heads of government on government visits generally come here – they don’t absolutely all come but generally they come.

There’s a ceremony which lasts maybe 20 minutes to half an hour at which we stand at the grave of the unknown warrior and they lay a wreath, before a brief tour of the Abbey.

Quite often their state television and media cover it. It’s very rarely covered here, but it always happens. On the first day of the state visit, that’s the general pattern: after lunch they come here and so that’s the first thing they do after they’ve met the Queen, and it’s significant because of course the grave of the unknown warrior, that’s the original unknown warrior and it’s therefore important that the Pope should come and pay his respects there. So he won’t be laying a wreath, but he will be saying a prayer, a prayer for peace, and I shall welcome him to the Abbey and we shall stand there and pray for peace.

Now, this is of course also the shrine of St Edward the Confessor, king of England from 1042 to 1066, and so he will also pray at the shrine. He’ll pray with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the shrine, and I’ll be there supporting them, as it were.

But it’s also the great ecumenical event of the visit, and there’ll be representatives of all the churches across the United Kingdom, and I hope the congregation of 2,200 people will represent very effectively the diversity of the Christian community, and so there’ll be church leaders being presented to him from all sorts of different backgrounds. So it’s going to be a great occasion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope will both speak and will have evening prayer with a version of choral evensong. So it’ll be a great occasion.

What are your feelings about the Pope visiting Britain more generally, and the Abbey in particular?
Well, I think the Pope is very welcome, and I’m very pleased he’s coming. It seems to me it’s a good thing that the Pope is coming. I know that the papal visit in 1982, before it happened, was marred by a certain amount of uncertainty because of the Falklands War.

But when the time came it was tremendously important and successful, and I think it led to a new stage in the relations between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church.

But those relations have been difficult, and continue to be difficult: despite the growing friendship. There are still obstacles to our working together and I hope that this will simply remind us of what we have in common, remind us of our common mission to the people of these shores, and of the ways in which we can collaborate effectively in the work of God’s mission, despite the various things that unhappily divide us.

Almost half a day in this four-day visit is given over to ecumenical events with the Church of England. What do you feel is the significance of this focus on relations between Rome and Canterbury?
I’m very glad that the Pope will be going to Lambeth Palace. Obviously Pope John Paul II met Robert Runcie in the old palace in Canterbury, but Lambeth Palace is in a sense the heart of the thing as far as the Archbishop of Canterbury is concerned.

And I understand he’s giving a talk.
They [Benedict XVI and Dr Rowan Williams] will have a private conversation together and there will also be a gathering of all the bishops of the Church of England and indeed of Anglicanism in these islands, with the Roman Catholic bishops as well. And I think that will be a very important and potentially significant.

Then, in a way more interesting for the wider interests of civil society, he’s going to give an address in Westminster Hall, and the Speaker and the Lord Speaker will welcome him, so this is very formal, very important occasion. No doubt Westminster Hall will be full. He’ll be speaking to civil society – not just members of Parliament but to representatives of civil society in the broadest sense.

And I hope that he’s got an opportunity there to talk about the centrality of Christianity within our understanding of the nation, and the deep embeddedness of the Church in our society, and I hope that he’s able to advance the mission of the Church in the broadest sense through his engagement in Westminster Hall.

When he comes here to Westminster Abbey and visits the shrine of St Edward the Confessor he is going to pray in the presence of the saint, canonised in 1161. St Edward, as I’m sure you know, was King of England and established his palace here in Westminster and rebuilt the abbey. Now, we know that there was an abbey here before. There was a monastery certainly from 960, when St Dunstan was bishop of London, just before he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

He certainly brought monks here from Glastonbury where he’d been abbot, so he either re-founded or founded the monastery here. But the great thing was that between 1042 and 1065 Edward the Confessor built his palace here and re-built the Abbey, and we’ve got some remains of Edward the Confessor’s Abbey. Some of the outbuildings remain here.

The great Romanesque church, which he built before the Norman conquest (because his mother, you remember, was a Norman), was almost on the same scale as the current church. The current church was built, of course, from the 13th century onwards.

But nevertheless it enshrines St Edward, who wanted his state, his palace, here to be bolstered, buttressed, supported and underpinned by the Church. And that’s the nature of the state that we continue to be, where the state is in relation to the Church, the Church in relation to the state. And that’s not in a way that makes either in Babylonian captivity to the other, but it’s a genuine engagement – and that’s what we represent here at Westminster Abbey.

That’s what the shrine of St Edward the Confessor represents to us as a nation. That’s the message that people get almost without having it articulated: it’s in the very stones of Westminster Abbey itself.

Anyone coming here can’t fail to perceive that, because of the nature of the memorials and shrines, and the people who are here, as it were. This is our national shrine and here is our national saint. I don’t contest St George being our patron saint but St Edward was before and he is a person of great significance.

So all of that is encapsulated on that very significant afternoon. It’s a chance for the Pope to address issues, which I know matter to him, about the embeddedness of Christianity within our culture. They matter to us, too.

What do you feel is the significance of John Henry Newman’s legacy to Anglicans?
Well, I don’t believe it’s possible for someone who’s lived a long time as an Anglican utterly to evade his Anglican heritage. And there is absolutely no doubt in the case of John Henry Newman that he means a great deal to Anglicans as well as to others – not just Anglicans in the tradition of the Oxford Movement. Keble stayed, Pusey stayed, Newman went.

That was a painful time for people in 1845: the parting of friends, and we can’t imagine what the parting of friends would have felt like in those days. They would have lived quite separate lives and didn’t see each other again, many of them, ever. Some of them, of course, they saw many years later when Cardinal Newman was welcomed back into Oxford as (I think) an honorary Fellow of Trinity. But nevertheless, that was a moment of enormous significance for him, I think, and indeed for the wider understanding.

So he continues to mean a lot for Anglicans. He certainly means a lot personally to me and I’m very happy he’s on his road to canonisation, because I think he’s also important for the Roman Catholic Church. I think the position he took in 1870 around Vatican I was very significant. Clearly he was also a great inspiration to Vatican II, a great inspiration to the Pope.

It’s extraordinary that the Pope is coming here to beatify Cardinal Newman. As I understand it he doesn’t normally beatify anyone now. They’re beatified by local prelates. So this is a most significant thing. He sees it as such. We see it as such. And I believe that Cardinal Newman can be a sign of our common heritage and our common labour in God’s mission.

So it’s really Newman’s ability to remind us of our shared heritage?
Well, it’s not just reminding us of our shared heritage. That’s all true, but he also, I think, points us forward.

So you think he shows a path to unity.
Well, we all have the goal of unity. The Pope is clear about the goal ultimately being one of unity. How could anyone who reads John 17, who hears the words of our Lord, not have a clear goal for unity, a passion for unity?

What I alluded to earlier was the way in which friendships have grown, whilst obstacles remain between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church and they sometimes appear to be increased by the decisions that are being taken here and there.

Nevertheless, subtly, quietly, gently, what I think is sometimes called “the dialogue of life” has developed, and friendships are very strong. I was myself immensely privileged to attend the inauguration of Archbishop Nichols’s ministry as Archbishop of Westminster, and I was there with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London and then again at the centenary of the consecration of Westminster Cathedral, and again, I sat just behind the Cardinal, very near the high altar, and felt tremendously humbled and honoured but also tremendous thankfulness for the friendship that’s grown up between us. Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are friends.

Will Newman’s beatification affect this at all?
There’s no doubt in my mind that we have different processes for recognising the holiness, the sanctity of individuals. There’s an Anglican route, which is quite different, and we raise people to the altar by a different process, but the process which the Roman Catholic Church uses is well known and well understood. It’s not universally accepted, or understood completely, but nevertheless it is inevitably influential.

We’ve raised Newman to the altar simply by his inclusion in the calendar. Certainly we’ve raised other Oxford Movement people to the altar. We commemorate him on August 11. So he is in the Anglican calendar as a pious, holy person who is commended to our edification. We have him in our calendar as “John Henry Newman, priest, tractarian, 1890”. That’s the year of his death.

The promulgation by the Pope of Anglicanorum coetibus, allowing for the potential large-scale conversion of some Anglo-Catholics, seemed to cause some annoyance in the Church of England. How has this step affected Anglican-Catholic dialogue?
I don’t think fundamentally it has affected Anglican-Catholic dialogue. I remember that it was very clearly said that this was a pastoral response to an approach made by a group of Anglicans. Whether and in what way an Anglican Ordinariate, or a group of Anglican Ordinariates around the world, will be established is a matter for speculation at the moment.

I don’t see myself a great sign of a rush towards such a thing from my friends in the Anglican-Catholic tradition who are not willing to accept the ordination of women bishops. But that legislation process is still going through and no one knows what the outcome will yet be.

There are, as we all know, quite a large number of Anglicans who’ve become Roman Catholics over the years, and quite a large number of Roman Catholics who’ve become Anglicans over the years. So there is a two-way traffic.

Some very dear friends of mine have become Roman Catholics in the past – some parishioners of mine. And some parishioners of mine were Roman Catholics who’ve become Anglicans. And it’s not a difficult process, really. I think it adds to our mutual understanding.

There was a lot of talk in the press about “poaching”, and you don’t feel that’s justified?
I didn’t see the word “poaching” myself. If anything, I think there was a certain feeling that the way had not been sufficiently prepared for the announcement and it came as something of a surprise to people in this country.

From my point of view, we shouldn’t see it as a sort of fundamental assault on Anglicanism, because it was backed by very clear statements here and elsewhere about the importance of the continuing dialogue and relationship between our two churches.

What do you think Anglicans stand to gain from the papal visit?
If the papal visit manages to raise, in the right sort of way, for debate the questions which I’ve referred to earlier about the fundamental relation between Christianity and our nation, then I believe we shall all have gained from it.

We should all see our country as being founded on Christian principles, and the life of the Church is deeply embedded in our country. That doesn’t mean to say that we don’t welcome those of other faiths. Of course we do.

And we want a good respect and proper dialogue between people of all faiths, and indeed of none.

That’s important, but nevertheless, we can’t simply slough off our history, and regard ourselves as a secular state. That is not what we are. We are a state that’s founded on religion. And the papacy was a very strong supporter of that for many centuries.

Since the 16th century things have gone slightly differently, but we’re all talking about the same things. And very often the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England in this country speak with the same voice on issues – not absolutely universally, but very often. And it’s much stronger when it is with the same voice.

So you feel there is a strong possibility of cooperation on moral issues on which both communions agree?
I’ve always believed that. When I was the Church of England’s chief education officer, one of my best colleagues was the director of the Catholic Education Service, and the strongest relationship of my bishop chairman was with Vincent Nichols when he was chairman of the Catholic Education Service. We would all go together to meet Secretaries of State for Education to discuss education matters, and we were stronger together.

Have you read any of the Pope’s books? What is your impression of his theology?
Well, I thought his first encyclical was profoundly moving, and very impressive, and the way he focused on the primary issues. I’ve also read the first volume of his Jesus of Nazareth, which I found very moving and powerful. Clearly there are issues on which we would diverge, but I think his is a powerful voice.

And do you feel he has much to say to Anglicans as a theologian?
I think the dialogue between Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians is extremely important. Because Rowan Williams and the Pope are both devotees of St Augustine, I like to think of them sitting down in a quiet moment having a purely theological conversation around some of the ideas of St Augustine. And I believe that when we get back to fundamentals then we are very close indeed.

And do you feel that you have gained much from reading the Pope’s books as an Anglican?
I think we all gain as Anglicans or Roman Catholics by reading books from slightly different traditions. I think that the Pope has his place within that sort of hierarchy of people it’s interesting to read.

How would you say his theological outlook compares with that of Dr Williams?
I wouldn’t seek to contrast them. I think they both have important things to say.



Meanwhile, another potential problem that could be an unnecessary but inevitable distraction during the papal visit. It is doubly a media magnet because it appears the three priests involved are being disciplined for committing sexual offenses.



Pope's visit could be overshadowed
by exile of Birmingham priests
By Martin Beckford

21 Aug 2010

Benedict XVI will beatify the famous Victorian convert to Rome, Cardinal Newman, as the highlight of next month’s trip and will also go to the Birmingham Oratory which he founded.

But the small Roman Catholic community in the Edgbaston area, where the Oratory is located, is in turmoil over three priests who were forced out to separate monasteries across the world.

Father Philip Cleevely, Father Dermot Fenlon and Brother Lewis Berry – known as the “Birmingham Three” by supporters – have been told “to spend time in prayer for an indefinite period”.

It comes less than a year after Father Paul Chavasse, the Oratory’s Provost who had been in charge of the Cause to canonise Cardinal Newman, was sent to America by the Vatican representative who is investigating the Oratory following a “chaste but intense” relationship with a young man.

The Oratory has refused to explain why the three other priests have been sent away – one is now in America, another in Canada and the third is going to South Africa – prompting worshippers to write an open letter to the church authorities.

It states: “We have seen the inexplicable removal of two priests and a brother who have exerted themselves heroically in the defence of our Catholic families.

“We have every right to a coherent explanation of what is going on, and an assurance that these priests and brother will be returned to their ministry with us forthwith.”

Another letter from parishioners urges the return of the three in time to witness the Pontiff’s private visit to the Oratory or the open-air beatification Mass in Cofton Park, south of Birmingham, on September 19th.

“Their absence during the beatification of their founder would represent not only a grave matter of personal injustice to them, but an insult to His Holiness.”

Their cause has also been taken up by Ruth Dudley Edwards, a crime writer, who has described them as victims of a church faction “which favours the old weapons of authoritarianism and concealment”.

Father Felix Selden, the Apostolic Visitor of the Holy See who is investigating the Oratory, said in a statement published this week: “I now again request that the Oratorian Community in Birmingham be allowed to continue its work without hindrance. The Apostolic Visitation that has been taking place at the Birmingham Oratory has been chiefly concerned with the Community’s own internal life and discipline.”

Oratory sources insist the three have not been found guilty of any sexual wrongdoing, but say the community was "disintegrating" through internal arguments and that the priests and brother had to be sent away to help repair the damage.