A new exhibition that looks at beliefs in spiritual beings and worlds has opened at the British Museum, building on a Radio 4 series presented by former museum director Neil MacGregor (pictured).
Cardinal Vincent Nichols was among those due to attend the opening on Wednesday of “Living with gods: peoples, places and worlds beyond”. The exhibition examines belief through everyday objects of faith from the perspective of “how” rather than “what” people believe. It includes objects of belief from societies around the world, starting with a 40,000-year-old mammoth ivory sculpture known as the Lion Man – a lion’s upper body on the lower half of a man that is the oldest known image of a mythical being. Other objects show the power of prayer, festivals and pilgrimage. The long history of religious conflict is also explored.
Bishop’s anniversary appeal
Bishop Declan Lang has called on the British Government to “use its influence to work towards a solution that enables peace and gives dignity to all people” in the Holy Land.
He was speaking to The Tablet ahead of an event in London on Tuesday, “Britain’s Broken Promise – Time for a New Approach”, held to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Declaration was issued by the British Government in 1917 and announced its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people”. Marking the centenary, a statement from the Bishops’ Conference described the Declaration as the “start of a process which has rendered Palestinians stateless, living under occupation in their own land, in refugee camps, or scattered throughout the world”. Bishop Lang said: “Hopefully the centenary … will be an opportunity for people to work for reconciliation and justice, providing for both Palestinian and Israelis a home they can call their own. The suffering and destruction in Israel, Palestine and neighbouring countries has been allowed to continue for far too long.” The bishop is one of a number of speakers due to address the event including Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism in the UK.
The Women’s Interfaith Council (WIC), a forum of Muslim and Catholic women’s associations fostering conflict resolution in Nigeria, has honoured Irish missionary Sr Kathleen McGarvey OLA.
The sister, who this year celebrates 25 years of missionary service, is a founder member of the group, which was set up in 2010 to train female faith leaders in conflict transformation and peace building in Kaduna, a region in Nigeria plagued by interreligious violence. Sr Kathleen, 49, subsequently returned to Ireland to take up the role of OLA provincial.
The charity Life has strongly defended a government decision to provide it with a grant from funding raised by a levy on women’s sanitary products. Life has been confirmed as one of dozens of beneficiaries from the £12 million generated by the levy and will receive an award of £250,000. It will be “prohibited” from spending the money on publicity or on its pregnancy counselling and education services.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said the grant was for a “specific project in west London, to support vulnerable, homeless or at-risk pregnant women who ask for their help. Payments will be made in arrears on receipt of a detailed monitoring report.” Ministers have faced criticism over the grant but the charity commended the Government “on its refusal to bow to pressure from the abortion industry and its political allies to try to stop funding for vulnerable women in crisis”.
Fr Patrick Cope, who was appointed as the senior Catholic advisor on prisons by the Ministry of Justice in 2013, has died from cancer at the age of 58. Ordained to the priesthood in 1982 in the Diocese of Middlesbrough, Fr Cope’s first appointment was as a curate in York and he subsequently became the diocesan youth officer and also chaplain to a young offenders institute. This involvement with prisons would continue until the end of his life. Following his appointment as a senior prisons adviser, he moved into the community of nuns at Tyburn Convent in London, where he celebrated daily Mass and joined in the divine office. After being diagnosed with cancer in August, Fr Cope spent time in a hospice but then returned to Tyburn where he died on 21 October. His body will be received into the convent chapel this weekend and remain in the sanctuary there until a Requiem Mass at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, on Monday, prior to burial in his home town of Hull.
Passchendaele memorial Mass
A Memorial Mass is due to take place in Salford on Friday to commemorate the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele, which culminated on 10 November 1917. Many of the soldiers who died in the battle, one of the most horrific of the First World War, came from the regiments based in the north west. The Mass, in the Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist, Salford, will be celebrated by Bishop John Arnold. A War Memorial Chapel in the cathedral lists the names of 663 men who died in the war, including more than 100 men who at that time were members of various conferences of the St Vincent de Paul Society across the diocese.
After the Mass, an exhibition will be launched, dedicated to the approximately 8,000 men from the diocese who were killed in the war.
Help for vandalised church
People from across Ireland and beyond have offered support to a “gofundme” page to help repair a Church of Ireland church in the west of Ireland after an attack by vandals. The Revd Stan Evans, rector of Holy Trinity church near Clifden, County Galway, said that he had received more than 200 calls after the attack.
Church pews and the altar were smashed and destroyed, while a cross was used to break up the organ. Bibles were thrown through the church’s stained glass windows. The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, called the destruction a “persecution against all Christians”.
The translator Rosemary Middleton, the daughter of Maisie Ward and the Australian-born publisher Frank Sheed, founders of the Catholic publishing company Sheed & Ward, has died. In 1954 she married Neil Middleton, and together they developed Sheed & Ward into the leading progressive Catholic publisher, with authors such as Hans Küng and their friend Herbert McCabe OP. Her brother, the novelist and essayist Wilfrid Sheed, died in 2011.
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