Eileen Jones reports on how she’s toured the churches of the world during lockdown

Our correspondent relates how she’s toured the churches of the world during lockdown

Like everyone else, I’ve hardly left my house over the last two months. And yet as a worshipper I’ve travelled the world, via online Masses, from my sofa. I’ve heard fine sermons and iffy ones. I’ve heard sublime singing and tuneless grunts. And I’ve seen inside churches across not only the UK but also Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

I’ve joined the congregation at monastery chapels and city centre churches; I’ve called in at places I haven’t been inside for decades. And I’ve heard many of the leaders of the Catholic Church in their own cathedrals, giving me a take on my faith that’s imbued with the experience of countries far away from my own.

Take Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, whose Mass I attended last Sunday. He’s a fine preacher, I now know: he can deliver a powerful sermon, and he kept me on the edge of my seat with his tale about Jesus saying farewell as he left the world in body, though he’d never leave it in spirit.

There was, of course, no congregation gathered to hear him in his magnificent white-and-gold-decorated Cathedral of the Holy Cross, though he wasn’t entirely alone. There were also two altar servers, who seemed to be accorded less screen time than the white and yellow roses adorning the gold candle holder. It was a professionally filmed production, panning from stained glass to organ pipes, fading and sweeping from altar to empty pews.

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