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!

The Green Pilgrimage Network

Whilst tent-dwellers were Occupy-ing the space to the West of St Paul's Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury was praying alongside Pope Benedict and other faith leaders in Assisi last week. And from tomorrow Assisi hosts another inter-faith gathering of importance, to launch the first global network aimed at "greening" pilgrimages. Mary Colwell writes about it in the current issue of The Tablet.

Some will ask, why the need for "greening"? Surely pilgrim walkers inherently proclaim a green gospel, rejoicing in nature as they go - this magnificent beech might easily have escaped my attention had I been car-borne along the little road from Upper Coberley to Hilcot on Friday. But then of course not all pilgrims are walkers or cyclists: many indeed jet to faraway destinations to give themselves the warm glow so many get from worshiping at a sacred place. Indeed, I have campaigned in the past for more virtual pilgrimages.

Mary's final sentence sets out a - for me, unfamiliar - quote from St Francis: "There is no use walking to somewhere to preach if your walking is not your preaching." And there was I thinking the expression "Walking the talk" was a recent invention!

Stroud Coffehousing

I have not been a member of any political party since resigning, in the 1980s, from the Ecology Party. The Stroud branch of what is now the Green Party organises monthly Coffee House Discussions: I was invited along this evening, to contribute (on behalf of Christian Ecology Link) to a discussion on what different faiths teach about the environment. The Star Anise Arts Café was packed.

My two-pennyworth was as follows: Christianity is centred upon the person of Jesus Christ, born 2,000 years ago in a Palestinian town on the West Bank. We believe that Jesus was the son of God, who created the universe and all it contains. Jesus gave us two commandments: love God (and therefore his creation), and love our human neighbours as we do ourselves (and therefore live in justice). One of Jesus’ early followers, Basil, an Armenian, wrote: “The bread you do not use is the bread of the hungry: the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the person who has no clothes: the shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot.” All around us in the world today, we see the hungry and the destitute, more often than not victims of environmental neglect or unjust exploitation of the earth’s resources. Christians have the responsibility, therefore, to defend earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone, and to protect mankind against self-destruction. Our tradition is to pray to God for strength, to see things as they really are; to judge what needs to be done, and to act in accordance with that judgment. As one of the oldest forms of our prayer is praise, I read – to conclude – Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun.

Seven others spoke. There was a presentation on behalf of Green Spirituality, “possibly not a faith at all”: its protagonist leads a monthly “no faith” service, usually attended by some two dozen “non-members”. A Celtic Druid was followed by a Shakamuni Buddhist. There was a Jewish doctor and Haroon from the Gloucester Mosque. One lady, a Quaker, assured us you don’t have to be a Christian to be a Friend; whilst another, a Bahai, spoke of consciousness, coherence, unity and cooperation. Tonight, she said, everyone is saying the same thing. Well, perhaps not quite, if you listen.