Liverpool saw a joyful celebration of popular Catholic devotion last weekend, of a kind that has become unfamiliar yet which has retained its power to move. The city hosted the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and Congress, in which thousands of ordinary worshippers participated in a street procession of the Blessed Sacrament – a rare sight in modern secular Britain – and in a solemn high Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral. There were numerous other fringe events parallel to the main Congress, including a frank discussion of differences in eucharistic theology between Catholic, Anglican and Methodist church leaders.