March 2024 Easter Day procession Valetta There can be few better places in Europe to celebrate the holiest time of the Christian year than Malta. In this deeply Catholic country, everyone seems to be caught up in the sacred drama that runs from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday. It is certainly a drama that is worked out on the streets as much as in the Churches. Pictured above: one of the decorated platforms that form the procession through the streets of Valletta on the evening of Good Friday. I was told that the platforms are so heavy that the wooden beams cause lumps to develop in the shoul ..read more

I was rather coy about letting my colleague English bishops know that I was setting out on a pastoral visit to the Canary Islands. Indeed, at Brussels Airport, those heading to Gran Canaria were to a man and a woman dressed for leisure not business. But this was a proper pastoral visit, albeit to a region known as a wonderful winter holiday destination for those seeking to escape the cold and wet of northern Europe in search of the sun. I had two main reasons for visiting in February 2024. Firstly, Bishop David retires at the end of this month. He has been lead bishop for the Canaries, and no ..read more

It is good to be properly out and about post-Covid! The effect of the pandemic had meant that I had not visited a number of our Swiss chaplaincies for several years. The beginning of a new academic year was the chance to address this with a four-day tour of Switzerland in the company of the Archdeacon, Peter Hooper.  We began in Geneva, with the opportunity to see the wonderfully renovated church of Holy Trinity (below). Phase One of their ambitious building project is now nearly complete. The exterior stonework has been completely refurbished. Inside, a beautiful new, beige stone floor h ..read more

I travelled to Kjiv with a group led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was there to offer pastoral support and encouragement to our little Anglican community in the city, some of whose members are pictured above. Whilst in the city I listened to many stories of personal bravery and suffering. These are Christian brothers and sisters who live in fear of attack by missiles and drones, and whose electricity, heat and light is interrupted on a regular and irregular basis because of the destruction of critical infrastructure. Our journey to Kjiv began in Warsaw. Here we were wonderfully looked a ..read more

Over the year, I have made four tours of different regions of France. A long weekend in November saw the fourth and final tour of some of our chaplaincies in and around Paris. Covid-19 made confirmation services difficult so there is a ‘backlog’. Beginning south of the city and pictured above is my first service of baptism and confirmation, with the community of St. Luke’s Fontainebleau. For the occasion, they had borrowed a chapel used by Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox communities: ‘the Church of the Ferns’. The east end of the building is marked off by a rather wonderful floor-to-ceil ..read more

It was a great pleasure to visit the Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest to celebrate the centenary of the building’s consecration. Pictured here alongside Chaplain Fr. Nevsky Everett is the Klein-Burtt family, all four of whom I had the privilege of confirming. The family had come to Romania from the USA via Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa they had enjoyed the ministry of Martin Reakes-Williams, formerly our chaplain in Leipzig, which had led to their commitment to the Anglican way, now followed up in Bucharest. Fr. Nevsky arrived in Bucharest from Oxford in the Spring. He has come to the city wi ..read more

At Holy Trinity, Brussels on Sunday 11th September. The evening that I heard Her Majesty the Queen had died, I was on my own in a hotel room in Karlsruhe, Germany. The 10-day Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) had just come to an end. I wondered about the various resonances. The Queen’s family is of partly German descent. However, George V had declared that his House and Family should be styled “Windsor” as a result of First World War anti-German sentiment. And the centre of Karlsruhe was largely reduced to rubble by allied bombing in the Second World War. Yet in 2022, I, along wi ..read more

Above: The interior of St. Andrew’s, Moscow  There has been a visit to Moscow planned in my diary for many months. The current situation has made this visit more important than ever. Helen and I wanted very much to see The Revd. Malcolm and Mrs Alison Rogers to demonstrate our care and support for them in what has become a particularly isolated and difficult ministry.    Above: the truly fabulous new Istanbul airport, which with 5 runways is reckoned to be the busiest airport in Europe as well a principal gateway to Asia.  Getting to Moscow is much more difficult than ..read more

It is always a joy to visit the magnificent Austrian capital. Very few places combine such a commitment to innovation with so rich an inheritance of architecture, culture and music. Vienna is truly one of the world’s great cities. And it is also a strategic location for the establishment of a new church plant and fresh expression of Anglicanism. “Citykirche” meets just across the road from the splendid Vienna Concert House.   Citykirche began its life just a couple of years ago in rather humbler surroundings. Here is the Roman Catholic chaplaincy room where Citykirche’s worship beg ..read more

The Covid epidemic has made travel much more difficult. Whilst you can do business on Zoom, face to face contact is irreplaceable. And liturgical events like Confirmations require touch as well as sound and sight. It was to help catch up on a backlog of requests for episcopal visits that we had the idea of a regional tour of South-East France. This is planned to be the first of four regional tours of a country where the distances make touring a great option. The tour was made possible by the new Archdeacon of France, Peter Hooper, who hired a car and acted as chauffeur. It was the fruit of a g ..read more