Winter 2007 2 Two Weddings in Corfu Majorcan Swim and Anniversary Abseil 3
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THE E UROPEAN A NGLICAN G ODLY PLAY: C HILDREN’ S PROJECT IN M ADRID E UROS, STERLING AND MORE: M AKING THE MOST OF OUR MONEY T HE COINS CRY OUT: R OMAN- TIC EURO STORY T WO WEDDINGS IN C ORFU: M AKING THE DIFFERENCE S T A LBAN’ S CHALLENGE: F ROM D ENMARK TO H ERTS FREE No.36 WINTER 2007 2 TWO WEDDINGS IN CORFU MAJORCAN SWIM AND ANNIVERSARY ABSEIL 3 THE E UROPEAN Wedding Blessings at Holy Trinity NGLICAN T WO Corfu have taken on something of A a showbiz touch this year. For the wedding of Karl Taylor and Maria Katehis, from Croydon in August a Scottish piper preceded the WEDDINGS, chaplain and the couple from the The Bishop of Gibraltar bride's hotel to the church. in Europe The Rt Revd Geoffrey Rowell Bishop’s Lodge, Church Road, Worth, Crawley RH10 7RT Tel:+44 (0) 1293 883051 & SWIM Fax: +44 (0) 1293 884479 Email: bishop@dioceseineurope. org.uk The Suffragan Bishop AND A DIVE The Rt Revd David Hamid Postal address: Diocesan Office Tel:+44 (0) 207 898 1160 In September Tom Hunt and Lucy Email: In his St Albans sermon, excerpts are to be found Hutchings, from Pimlico, had their [email protected]. org.uk wedding blessing high up on the slopes The Diocesan Office on page 14, Mark Oakley quotes the poem said of Mount Pantocrator, Corfu's highest 14 Tufton Street, London, mountain. The setting was the newly SW1P 3QZ to have been written by a bishop as his epitaph. restored Greek 'deserted village' of Tel:+44 (0) 207 898 1155 Tell my priests when I am gone o´er me to shed Rou with stunning views southwards Fax: +44 (0) 207 898 1166 over Corfu island and across to the Email: diocesan.office@europe. mountains of Albania. c-of-e.org.uk no tears. For I shall be no deader then than they Diocesan Secretary have been for years. Mr Adrian Mumford This edition of the European Anglican contrasts Assistant Diocesan Secretary Seven swimmers from Mrs Jeanne French that pessimism with glimpses of a lively, happy St. Andrew’s Mallorca, Finance Officer diocese on the move. This selection of pictures completed a sponsored Mr Nick Wraight swim across the bay in Puerto Pollensa. Taking The Cathedral of the Holy and stories illustrates an action packed few part was the Assistant Trinity, Gibraltar Chaplain, the Reverend Dean:The Very Revd Alan Woods months in our churches. Michael Redfearn, who Diocesan Website swam part of the way, www.europe.anglican.org and Gift Aid Secretary, May Battersby, who Editor and Diocesan swam the whole Communications Officer distance. “I felt perfectly The Revd. Paul Needle ok afterwards” said May Postal address: Diocesan office “and I didn’t even feel Email: stiff the following day.” [email protected] The event raised over Tel:0034 662 482 944 1,600 € for Church Design Funds and a local Adept Design, Norwich Nursing Home. Printer Next year St. Mary's Church Norwich Colour Print Rotterdam will celebrate its 300th Anniversary. An Anniversary Fund Distribution has begun to fund the festivities and CoDEStorm plc restore our Bell Tower and wrought Cover photo: As Christmas iron church fence dating from 1913. approaches churches all over One Sunday in September the Europe will be celebrating – like the chaplain Rev Steve Axtell climbed the congregation pictured here at La Euromast in Rotterdam then abseiled Côte near Geneva in Switzerland - 100 metres down and raised € 528. often using the Christingle - thought to have been first used in the German town of Marienborn in 1747. 4 BISHOP’S TRAVEL JOURNALS FROM ROMANIA TO LEBANON 5 for the Communist Young Pioneers. our first evening where an Iftar (the Orthodox Church, and the fact that In one we saw church-sponsored meal which breaks the daily fast of they had recognised Anglican orders. teaching of arts and crafts and other Ramadan) was hosted by the Patriarch Daniel is a Christian leader B ISHOP’ S MOVES skills, as well as a superbly Christian leaders of Damascus for the of considerable dynamism who has professional display of acrobatics and Grand Mufti and the Muslim leaders. already contributed much to the When a school pupil was asked what they knew about a bishop the reply was “He moves dancing by enthusiastic young On our second day it was the ecumenical movement and to the diagonally across the chessboard!” Our Diocesan Bishop has been moving in all directions people. Health and safety would have Muslim leaders who hosted a similar Orthodox Church in Romania. It was trembled but the vitality was across Europe during the Autumn and writes about his visits and meetings. Iftar for the Christians.The Grand good to be there to welcome him stunning.Another visit was to a Mufti is concerned to stress the on behalf of the Archbishop at the prison, where the church has begun common inheritance of the beginning of his ministry as Patriarch, as neighbours as ourselves. a prison chaplaincy, forbidden under Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Islam and and to be present in the former Later in the month I was part of communism.The Catholicos Christianity.The Christian leaders Romanian Parliament building, now the delegation accompanying the questioned a young woman prisoner underlined the freedom that the used by the church, where a great Archbishop of Canterbury on official with her seven year old daughter, Christian community had.The fresco of the Resurrection faces the visits to Armenia, Syria and Lebanon. and vowed to use all his influence to President of Syria, Bashir Assad, with horseshoe assembly hall where once We have had long and close relations get her sentence commuted, as it was whom the Archbishop had an hour’s a hammer and sickle or a symbol of with the Armenian church and were wrong for a child to be brought up conversation, stressed that although Nicolae Ceacescu must once have warmly welcomed by Catholicos in such circumstances. From the Syria was a secular country, that did been – a reminder that the Gospel Karekin, the young and dynamic prison we went to a seminary on the not mean secularism – it was rather of the resurrection endures and head of the Church. Following the shores of Lake Sevan. Recently a framework for the different triumphs over dark and seemingly collapse of the Soviet Union and founded and opened, it has already a communities of faith to have their intractable political systems. therefore independence for Armenia, full complement of young ordinands. freedom of worship and education, a The Diocese in Europe has its the Armenian church, which looks The Dean spent some time at framework in which confessional unique part to play in the life of the back more than 1700 years to the Mirfield, a clear indication of the opposition needed to be put to one church in Europe and beyond.Visits conversion of King Tiridates by St value of these ecumenical exchanges. side.There are some very good stories such as those I have described are Gregory the Illuminator making The haunting music of the to be told about Syria as a country spots of time when we can see a Armenia the first Christian nation, Armenian liturgy and the plangent which is committed to this kind of little of what God is about in our there are enormous challenges in bells of the Mother Church of religious freedom, and which has world today, as there are surely spots mission and ministry.As a dark Etchmiadzin echoed in our minds welcomed many refugees. of time in every congregation and background there is the memory of and hearts as we left for Syria From Syria to Lebanon, still chaplaincy, and indeed personal the Armenian ‘genocide’, the terrible and Lebanon. suffering from the results of the Christian life, when we see and massacres and ethnic cleansing at the Above: Bishop Geoffrey with the Catholicos Karekin and the Archbishop of In Syria we were in another recent conflicts, as bombed out know a little more of the life of the time of the First World War when the Canterbury at the sacred flame memorial in memory of Armenian Genocide. context – a country where the buildings in Beirut made clear, where Spirit in the Church. Be encouraged, Armenian population of what is now Right: Bishop Geoffrey meets the Grand Mufti of Syria in Damascus. Muslim majority and the Christian a different history and culture has go on being encouraged by God, eastern Turkey were slaughtered and minority enjoy an excellent meant that politics are confessional. and encourage others in the way expelled from their ancient relationship.This was symbolised on The unresolved Israeli-Palestinian Every so often in my considerable delivered, from the Ecumenical of Christ. homeland. One of the most moving issue leaves its marks here as travelling as Bishop in Europe there Patriarch Bartholomew with his moments of the Archbishop’s visit everywhere you go in the Middle are unique visits with experiences concern for care for creation, to was the laying of a wreath and East.The ethnic cleansing that was which ought to be shared. September Cardinal Kasper on the unity of the prayers at the memorial to the part of the coming into being of the provided such a sequence. church, and social challenges from Armenian genocide on a hill on the state of Israel is also something which At the beginning of the month I the San Egidio community and outskirts of Yerevan.A torch was lit will in the end have to be faced, as a was in Romania as one of the others.