Patrick Comerford
There is a Facebook page for people known as ‘Church Crawlers’. I suppose I have been an inveterate church crawler, not just for religious reasons, but because I enjoy the varieties in architecture, the history and lore, the collections of art works and treasures, the icons and stained glass, the stories of people of faith, and the differences in approach to how we use sacred and liturgical space.
My inquisitive and inquiring visits include not only churches and cathedrals, but also meeting houses, cemetery and airport college and hospital chapels, as well as halls, synagogues, mosques and temples – Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh. I am constantly impressed less by the buildings themselves and more by how people of faith try, fail and try yet again and again to provide sacred and safe space where we can give expression to our quest for the love of God and the compulsion to love one another.
‘Church Crawlers’ are spectators, but also part of the journey alongside people of faith as pilgrims and understand the religious significance of being refugees in a hostile and often unwelcoming world.
In my visits to St Albans this month, I was reminded how the story of Christians there begins with the simple of offer of refuge and sanctuary to a priest on the run in a time of persecution, and results in one of the great abbeys of mediaeval England and one of the great cathedrals of the church today.
The stories of the synagogues in St Albans are also reminders of the plight of religious refugees first fleeing the pogroms in Poland, the Baltics and Tsarist Russia and then the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. The mosques are reminders of the welcome south Asians received in this country in the post-war decades.
In the porch of Saint Alban and Saint Stephen Church, the Roman Catholic parish church on Beaconsfield Road in St Albans, a small display case contains a simple reminder of the inseparable link between religion and refuge, and how it is so relevant today.
The Lampedusa Cross was made from the wreckage of a refugee boat that capsized in the Mediterranean over 10 years ago. A boat carrying 466 people from Somalia and Eritrea was crossing the Mediterranean from Tunisia caught fire near the Italian island of Lampedusa on the night of 11 October 2013. The vessel capsized and sank near the island.
In all, 311 people were drowned that night; 155 people were rescued and taken to a church on Lampedusa. The islanders pooled resources to feed and clothe the survivors and to bury the bodies washed up on the shore.
Francesco Tuccio, a carpenter who attended the church that provided sanctuary and cared for the survivors, began making small crosses from the wood of the boat and giving them to survivors and the islanders who cared for them. Earlier that year, he had made a larger cross, chalice and plate for Pope Francis when he visited the island.
Francesco Tuccio made a cross from the boat’s wreckage for each of the 155 survivors, and several larger ones as symbols of community.
On of those crosses was acquired by the British Museum in London five years ago in 2016. It has toured English museums and art galleries to encourage debate and reflection on the plight of migrants.
The cross was displayed in Coventry Cathedral when Coventry was the UK City of Culture and it has visited Manchester, Hastings, Derby, Ipswich, Bristol and Rochester, and was seen in museums, art galleries, churches and cathedrals.
On its tour, the cross was accompanied by a display of 12 miniature boats made from bicycle mudguards and packed with burnt matches, representing people making the perilous crossing on the Mediterranean from north Africa to Europe. The boats were made by the Syrian-born artist Issam Kourbaj as part of a series, ‘Dark Water, Burning World.’
During the tour, Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, said: ‘The wood of the cross is a reminder of the passage, not only of these vulnerable refugees who staked everything on the boats being able to safely transport them, but of the human beings throughout history who have sought refuge on similar perilous journeys. I hope visitors around the UK will connect with the poignancy of the cross and be able to reflect upon the ongoing disruption, upheaval and hope that it symbolises.’
Jill Cook, the curator of ‘Crossings: Community and Refuge’, said: ‘The Lampedusa Cross reminds us of all the histories that are lost and of the thousands of people who are not otherwise remembered. The wood with its paint blistered by the sun and smelling of salt, sea, and suffering embodies a crisis of our times, as well as hope.’
She added: ‘The cross invites discussion of the varied reactions to one of the great tragedies of our time. It is an artefact shaped by tragedy that symbolises those who have nothing and desperately seek to share in a better future.’
The Catholic international development agency CAFOD lent a Lampedusa Cross to the parish of Saint Alban and Saint Stephen in St Albans for a week in 2016, when it was a focus of prayer.
CAFOD last year gave the parish a Lampedusa Cross made by Francesco Tuccio. The parish says: ‘The cross is a reminder of the children, men and women who, today, are leaving their homes and risk lives to flee persecution.’
In the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG tomorrow, the Revd Annie Bolger of the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Brussels, points out: ‘Due to climate crises, war, famine and many other factors, the UNHCR estimates that 117.2 million people were forcibly displaced or stateless in 2023. The numbers will only rise in the year ahead and may simply overwhelm us. We cannot possibly imagine the trauma and difficulty that each person’s story represents. That is why Jesus came among us as a refugee: to remind us of the humanity and dignity of every displaced person.’
The display in the church porch in St Albans includes words from Pope Francis: ‘We ourselves need to see that refugees … are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.’
The Lampedusa Cross is a reminder of the harsh reality facing vulnerable migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and how facile and inhumane are the words of those who reduce their responses to these crises to simplistic catchphrases such as ‘Stop the Boats.’
