Bringing Pope Francis to Belfast
Last weekend I was in Belfast to give two talks, and in one case to bring a video message I recorded with Pope Francis the week before in Rome.
The message was for the opening of the Four Corners Festival, a remarkable week-long arts festival born of the friendship of a Presbyterian minister, Steve Stockman, and Fr Martin Magill, a Catholic priest. It aims at bringing together the different “corners” of the divided city of Belfast, building bridges of Christian unity for reconciliation. Their crazy idea for this year’s 10th anniversary festival was that Pope Francis would open it in the Anglican (Church of Ireland) cathedral of St Anne’s, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, would close it at the Catholic cathedral of St Peter’s.
Left to right: Rev Steve Stockman, Fr Martin Magill, and Dr Gladys Ganiel of Queen’s University.
They settled for me rather than Pope Francis, because Steve Stockman in particular was deeply taken by Let Us Dream, which he felt spoke to the situation in Belfast. But I was able to record a remarkable 2’50 video message — recorded on my iPhone in the Pope’s salone in the Santa Marta guesthouse in Rome — which was played on a screen, with subtitles, at the cathedral, which many people said was in itself a breakthrough, unthinkable even 20 years ago.
But it’s worth seeing the whole event to capture the atmosphere and meaning of it all. The evening was introduced by the Dean of St Anne’s, who reminded us that it was the anniversary of Bloody Sunday; then comes Fr Magill, and a powerful testimony by Jasper Rutherford (at 4’47); then Rev Stockman (at 11’00) introduces the papal message and afterwards (15’50) reflects on it, and prays for Francis. My presentation is at 27’ to ‘54 (or read it as PDF here) and followed (after a song) by a Q&A with Dr Ganiel (at 1hour in) about the writing of Let Us Dream and other matters.
The event was reported in Shared Future News, the Irish Catholic, the Belfast Telegraph, the BBC, and elsewhere.
At the closing event on Sunday night (6th February), the Archbishop of Canterbury joked: "No one told me when I agreed to do this that I’d be following the Pope. To say that His Holiness is a tough act to follow is a bit like saying that Everest takes a bit of climbing.”
Speaking in St Peter’s (Catholic) cathedral in Belfast, he went on: “But I am privileged to call him a friend and a brother, and it is an extraordinary privilege to be here. One of the things we share in the meetings we’ve had is a passion for peace-building, for all kinds of reasons. I mean by peace-building or reconciliation — and I know that can be quite a dodgy word —enabling people to disagree well. Not to agree, but to disagree, but to disagree well. To relish, to feast on the vast and beautiful diversity of our humanity while loving one another and living in peace."
Later in his talk, at 44’30 (here), he have a compelling account of the retreat he and Pope Francis gave the warring leaders of South Sudan back in 2019, and the moment that the Pope bent down to kiss their feet. “It was a washing of feet … tears were running down every face there, including the BBC cameraman.”
He went on: “I won’t say the war ended, but it was the turning point. And God willing, sometime in the next few months, perhaps year, we will go and see them in Juba and see what progress can be made.”
The other reason for going to Belfast was to give the St Brigid’s Day lecture at the wonderful Catholic parish of St Brigid’s close by Queen’s University, where Fr Eddie ODonnell is long-serving parish priest and a delightful host. The talk was on pope Francis’s leadership and vision for the Church but was inevitably focussed on synodality. And the following day I had a great session on synodality with the parish pastoral council. The lecture, introduced by Fr Eddie, and responded to by the Bishop of Down and Connor, Noel Trainor, is here: