A history lesson

As I mentioned a year ago, my school contemporary Norman Tanner S.J. said he'd come to Cheltenham to talk about ecology from the historical perspective. Since then, Vatican II: The Essential Texts has been published, a collaboration between Norman and Pope Benedict. So, renowned as my old friend is as a church historian, there should be a good turnout on Monday next, when he visits us. In fact he arrives on Sunday, to enable us to spend some time together: I hope to show him something of the Cotswolds: I always enjoy seeing round through the eyes of a visitor, especially at this golden time of year.

Bishop Frank

Your Holiness,

Congratulations on your election as Pope, and I hope your new job won't turn out to be a poisoned chalice - either self-administered, or slipped to you by some corrupt member of your household (the fate which was surmised to have befallen your predecessor but two).

Although I am addressing this to "Your Holiness" - in traditional mode - I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't prefer a less lofty title, judging by the way you introduced yourself from the balcony last evening. "Brothers and sisters, good evening." What a delightful beginning!

Sam Jones had a long piece in last Saturday's Guardian about cardinals who made up the electoral college. "Then there are those who find fame for other reasons," he wrote. "Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit intellectual and Archbishop of Buenos Aires who travels round town by bus and told his compatriots not to waste their money on plane tickets to Rome to see him become a cardinal, but to give it instead to the poor..." My heart leapt to read this: someone who walked the talk!

And then what a great name to choose! I photographed a "St Francis" stained glass window when visiting St Alphege's Church in Solihull last month: here is a detail. You can see the saint's stigmata - reminding us of the cross Christians have to bear - and the wolf (the Curia?) alongside the rabbit (us in our pews) and the robin (Reliant? - the new Popemobile?).

I groaned when the news came of Joseph Ratzinger's election: last night, though, I was fighting back tears of joy. You are an answer to many prayers!

"A three-year Odyssey"

This is how sculptor, Rory Young described his journey leading from the important commission for statues of seven martyrs for the niches on the nave altar screen at St Albans. Rory was talking to supporters of the Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust this evening - a crammed Chedworth Village Hall. He called his lecture, "Mediaeval form and colour inspiring new work at St Albans Cathedral".

Goodness knows how many images we were treated to! Some slides incorporated two or more, so it must have been in the hundreds. They illustrated a voyage round mainland Europe (Amiens, Verona, Padua, Rome), but particularly England: other cathedrals of course (Westminster, Durham, Exeter, Coventry, York, Wells...); abbeys such as Westminster, Tewkesbury and Downside; great parish churches (St John the Baptist, Cirencester, St Mary, Warwick, Holy Trinity, Coventry), and lesser ones (South Newington, Notgrove, Leigh Delamere). Then there were the trips to the V&A and the Mercers' Hall. All served to illustrate a quest for hints of original colour, and the best sculptural representation of flowing garments and off-guard expression.

Perhaps Helen Whitbread over-egged it when she paid tribute to "a present Michelangelo in our midst," but we were certainly wowed.

Alas, we couldn't stay for supper in the pub, as bidden: it was 19-year-old Misa Yamahoi's last evening with us. One of a group of students from Japan, she arrived to stay with us on the 10th, the day before the Pope resigned. It seems strange that all the hoo-hah surrounding this event in our media should so completely pass by someone in our midst but from quite another world.

Post Benedict XVI

We don't often think of a Pope on his knees, begging forgiveness. In this wooden relief, Peter is doing just that, of Jesus' mother, having betrayed him three times before the cock crew. The relief is one of three carved a few decades ago, as the retable of a side altar in the little chapelle Notre-Dame du Carrefour at Montredon, just North of the River Lot: I passed through when walking last May.

We must be careful what we wish for, but it's tempting to put together a "wanted" list when thinking about the coming conclave. Someone who is willing to ask forgiveness for too much past secrecy; for the Church's treatment of women; for toleration of injustice, and for a presumption of white superiority? An enabler of bishops within their own jurisdictions? A pricker of Vatican Curial bubbles? A putter-aside of fripperies and too much ceremonial? A servant of unity between Christians, and between the Abrahamic faiths? An innovator in the field of virtual communication between Catholics worldwide - convener, even, of a Twitter Synod? A leader who puts concern for the Created world at the heart of his ministry? One could go on, but you will no doubt be already saying "Get real!"

The Year of Faith

Here we are, well into what the Pope has decreed to be the Year of Faith, and what am I doing about it? Well, not a lot I realised; so I thought the least I could manage was to dash a letter off to the local paper to staunch the flow of anti-Christian sentiment that's flooding its Letters page. I used to write to the Gloucestershire Echo quite frequently, but today's is the first for many years: not that it will have any great effect.

The grandest design

Caroline's dream is to build a carbon-neutral house in the countryside. It's a dream stimulated by, amongst others, Kevin McCloud the presenter of Grand Designs.

Yesterday, Kevin was one of many celebs. who was announced as having signed up to 10:10, the pledge to try to cut our individual carbon emissions by 10% next year, in order to put pressure on politicians that we want tougher action - a very grand design, indeed - on global warming. Some of them were asked "Do you know what your carbon footprint is?" I liked playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah's candid answer to this question: "Absolutely not. It's a bit like looking at your bank account when you're overdrawn. You just don't want to think about it."

Having sounded off just the other day about air-borne pilgrimages, I also liked the answer Kevin McCloud gave to the question: "Who in the world would you like to sign up to the 10:10 pledge?" "I think," he said, "if it's not going to be Jeremy Clarkson, it's the Pope. He's responsible for the ethical position of tens of millions of people worldwide. And responsible for millions flying to see him in St Peter's Square. He should be encouraging all those nuns to quit the plane and make the pilgrimage on foot."

"Never again..."

For today's meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network, we travelled to Wallsworth Hall as guests of Nature in Art. Simon Trapnell, its Director, joined us for part of our discussion.

What a vision! To take on that vast building (set in the middle of nowhere at the end of a long drive) and to establish within it a vibrant collection of works depicting things bright and beautiful, and in particular all creatures great and small!

So as to mark the second anniversary of the dire flooding in this part of Gloucestershire, we read together familiar words from the Book of Genesis about Noah, "a man of integrity among his contemporaries." God's covenant (made after the flood subsided) was: "Never again will I curse the earth because of man... Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done. As long as earth lasts, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall cease no more."

In these days many prophesy the end of humanity as a consequence of human greed. In his latest encyclical, Pope Benedict says that if people destroy their environment, they will also destroy their own life source. No complacency in virtue of Genesis 8!

Three cheers for Hoggart

Simon Hoggart sometimes infuriates me, but at others he hits the nail on the head. As in today's article, which includes this, about Pope Benedict's recent speech to the Curia:

...I know he was trying to make a more subtle point: that we should worry about human frailty as much as environmental degradation, but it didn't half come out wrong. Maybe someone should point out to his holiness that the human race will survive since the great majority of people are still straight, and being gay isn't just a lifestyle choice, like where you live, or whether you pick turkey or goose for Christmas. It's a decision made for you - you may think by God.

What the Pope may need is someone to live with, of either sex, someone who treats him as an equal, and is able to tell him, "but, dearest heart, that is sheer blithering idiocy! Please don't say it. And you did promise to peel the potatoes ..."

As it is, working it out on his own this one seems to be roughly as infallible as a 30-year old Hillman Imp.