COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis in front of the White Tower in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
I was recalling last week how I came across a collection of photographs of modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki and how I realised that I had written little about these sculptures over the years.
Rather than leave the photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I started an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki. Over the next few weeks, I am inviting you to join me in a minor odyssey of recovery and discovery as my mind wanders through Thessaloniki, looking at these sculptures again.
The sculptures I looked at last week include the monumental statues of Aristotle, Alexander the Great and Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Jewish Memorial by Konstantinos Lentaris in the campus of the Aristotele University of Thessaloniki.
The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis (1877-1934) in front of the White Tower on the waterfront is a fine example of monumental sculpture in the city. The sculpture by Georgios Dimitriadis (1880-1941) is one of the oldest in the city and it depicts Votsis as both strict and imposing.
Admiral Nikolaos Votsis (Νικόλαος Βότσης) was a senior naval officer from Hydra. The sinking of the Feth-i Bülend may not have had much military significance, but it was a great morale boost to the Greeks. It was the first of a series of naval successes in the war, and a week later, the city was surrendered to the Greek army. The mast of the Turkish ship was placed on the White Tower, and the Greek flag was flown from it.
The bust of Admiral Votsis became a symbol of the liberation of Thessaloniki and of resistance to the occupation during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Votsis became a national hero and has been compared with the legendary fireship captains of the Greek Revolution. While he was a student at the Naval Academy, he took part in the naval blockade of Crete in 1896-1897, in the run-up to the Greco-Turkish War in 1897.
Votsis rose to the rank of Rear Admiral, commanded two more battleships and then became Greece’s High Commissioner to the Allied mission in Constantinople (Istanbul). Later, he was captain of the battleship Limnos, which supported Greek landings in Turkey and took part in the final Greek sea-borne withdrawal in 1922. He died in exile in Paris in 1931.
The sculptor of this bust, Georgios Dimitriadis (Γεώργιος Δημητριάδης), was born in Athens. He specialised in monumental public sculpture and was one of the most productive sculptors of his time. In an eclectic way, he drew on neoclassic and academic aesthetic styles, often brightened with naturalistic and allegoric elements.
The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis is on a marble pyramidal pedestal inscribed with verses in his honour written by the Greek satirical poet Giorgos Souris (1853-1919), who has been described as a ‘modern Aristophanes.’
The side of the plinth is inscribed with the names of the torpedo boat crew that Votsis commanded when he sank the Ottoman battleship Feth-i Bülend in the harbour of Thessaloniki 18 October 1912, during the First Balkan War.
The poet Giorgos Souris published celebratory and satirical verse dedicated to the liberation of Thessaloniki from Ottoman rule and the entry of the Greek army in November 1912 in his weekly verse newspaper O Romios (The Greek) on 10 November 1912. He used sharp, rhythmic, and popular rhyming verse to capture national enthusiasm, political commentary and the historic significance of the city’s liberation.
The verses in honour of Admiral Votsis written by the Greek satirical poet Giorgos Souris in 1912 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The bust of Votsis became a symbol of the liberation of Thessaloniki. During the German occupation and World War II, the sculpture became the final point of resistance rallies, when young people laid a wreath and sang the national anthem, while the Nazis pointed guns at them.
Three ships of the Hellenic Navy have borne the name Lemnos or Limnos (Λήμνος), named after the island of Lemnos and the First Balkan War Battle of Lemnos. The first was the battleship Lemnos (1914-1932), commanded by Votsis, and the name and its traditions have been held since 1982 by the Greek frigate Limnos.
I was on board the frigate Limnos 30 years ago in 1996 as part of a flotilla that took about two dozen journalists from Kalymnos to see the islets of Imia at the height of tensions that year between Greece and Turkey, and then brought us back to Rhodes.
There was a continuity between that trip in the Aegean in 1996, and the career of Votsis that began with the naval blockade of Crete 100 years earlier in 1896-1897. The frigate Limnos continues to be present in Greek-Turkish tensions in the Aegean, which have been reignited with a retired Turkish admiral threatening the Greek presence on five Greek islands: Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Kastellorizo. Recent Turkish assertion at the highest level have extended claims to several other Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Lemnos.
The Headington Shark is a sculpture of a large shark embedded head-first in the roof of a terraced house at 2 New High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Patrick Comerford
Headington is a suburb in east Oxford, at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames valley below, with Marston to the north-west, Cowley to the south, and Barton and Risinghurst to the east. When I first visited Oxford in my teens, around 1969 or 1970, I stayed in Headington at the youth hostel in Cowley House on Jack Straw’s Lane, which closed in 2001.
I have been through Headington many times in recent years, on my way to and from the hospitals. But an appointment earlier this week at John Radcliffe Hospital and a follow-up visitlater in the week, offered opportunities and time to walk around Headington, and to see the ‘Headington Shark’, the area’s most celebrated landmark and an anti-war protest. There was time too to see Saint Andrew’s Church, Holy Trinity Church and some other churches in the area; to see the ‘Black Booy’ – a pub with a controversial name; and to look into some of Headington’s literary, academic and cultural connections, including links with CS Lewis and Isaiah Berlin.
The commercial and shopping life of Headington and traffic through the area focuses on London Road, the main road between London and Oxford. But Headington also has not one but two High Streets, New High Street and Old High Street. And it was on one of those streets that I found the ‘Headington Shark’ and other noticeable sites.
The Headington Clock in the centre of commercial and shopping life and traffic on London Road in Headington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
The Headington Shark – properly named ‘Untitled 1986’ – is a sculpture of a large shark embedded head-first in the roof of a terraced house at 2 New High Street. It began as protest art, installed 40 years ago by Bill Heine and John Buckley, without planning permission and as an anti-war protest, symbolising bombs crashing into homes and buildings.
The shark was installed on 9 August 1986 on the roof of the home of Bill Heine, an American-born radio presenter. Heine and Buckley came up with the idea of the shark while they were drinking wine on the street, and imagined the shark as a metaphor for bombs falling from the US warplanes that flew overhead on their way to bomb Libya.
The shark is in deliberate contrast with its ordinary suburban location. It was designed, created and installed by the Leeds-born sculptor John Buckley with his friend Anton Castiau, a local carpenter. ‘The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation’, Heine said. ‘It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki’.
The painted fibreglass sculpture weighs 200 kg (450 lb), is 7.6 metre (25 ft) long, and the title ‘Untitled 1986’ is written on the gate. It took three months to build the installation, and it was put in place on the 41st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.
The Headington Shark began as anti-war and nuclear statement by John Buckley and Bill Hein (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Over time, there were complaints about the conditions of the sculpture and the house, so to mark the shark’s 21st anniversary it was renovated by Buckley in 2007. Magnus Hanson-Heine, bought the house in 2016 to preserve the shark, before his father Bill Heine died on 2 April 2019. The house has been an Airbnb guesthouse since 2018.
The shark was controversial and was the subject of a six-year battle between Oxford City Council and Bill Heine. The council tried to remove the shark on the grounds of safety and because it did not have proper planning permission. However, the shark had much local support. The Department of the Environment ruled on planning grounds in 1992 that the shark could remain in place because it did not harm a visual amenity.
Oxford City Council had the shark listed with Historic England in 2016 and designated the sculpture a heritage site in 2022, despite objection from Magnus Hanson-Heine, who said, ‘Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd.’
Saint Andrew’s Lane in Old Headington … people have lived in Headington ever since the Stone Age (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
People have lived in Headington ever since the Stone Age, and excavations in Barton Lane suggest a date in the 11th century BCE, while pottery found on the Manor Ground is evidence of an Iron Age settlement in the 7th century BCE. The site of a Roman villa and Roman kilns from about 300 CE have been found, and Anglo-Saxon burial remains from about 500 CE have been discovered.
The name Headington comes from the Old English Hedena’s dun, meaning ‘Hedena’s hill’, and it was the site of a palace or hunting lodge of the Kings of Mercia. Æthelred the Unready, in a charter in 1004, gave land in Headington to Saint Frideswide’s Priory, including the quarry and the area around it.
Henry I granted a chapel at Headington to the Augustinians of Saint Frideswide’s Priory when the priory was founded in 1122. Saint Andrew’s Church, the oldest surviving building in Headington, was built in the mid-12th century, enlarged in the 13th century, the bell tower dates from the 13th or 14th century and the Gothic Revival architect JC Buckler restored the church and lengthened the nave in 1862-1864.
Stone from Headington Quarry was used to build Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1474, and was later used to build Cardinal College, later Christ Church.
Headington Football Club, later Headington United, was formed in 1893 and eventually became Oxford United.
Headington developed rapidly in the early 20th century, with new housing around the mediaeval village, now known as Old Headington, around Saint Andrew’s Church. New Headington, south side of London Road, dates from the late 19th century, and other neighbourhoods include Highfield, Quarry and Headington Hill.
Today the main employment sectors are medicine, education and research. The area includes the main campus of Oxford Brookes University, Ruskin College, which moved to Headington in 2012, and Oxford’s main hospitals, including the John Radcliffe, Nuffield and Churchill.
A plaque at the gate of the Headington House commemorates Sir Isaiah Berlin, who lived there from 1956 until he died in 1997 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Headington’s notable residents have included the poet Elizabeth Jennings; CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, who lived in the area until he died in 1963 and who is buried at Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry; JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who lived in Headington from 1953 to 1968; the author Elizabeth Bowen; the newspaper publisher Robert Maxwell; and Lord Nuffield (William Morris).
Oxford academics who have lived in Headington include Sir Anthony Kenny, who died earlier last month (3 August 2026), and Sir Isaiah Berlin, who married Mrs Aline Halban of Headington House in 1956, and lived there until he died in 1997. The comedian David Mitchell, star of the BBC series Ludwig, grew up in Headington.
Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (1886-1978), a Spanish writer, diplomat, writer, historian and pacifist and Professor of Spanish at Oxford University, lived in Headington before and after the Spanish Civil War, in 1929-1931 and 1940-1973. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize, received the Charlemagne Prize in 1973.
The house in Headington where Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo lived before and after the Spanish Civil War (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
The original, 17th century Black Boy stood from 1667 or earlier at the corner of Barton Lane and Old High Street. The board above the door showed a black boy-servant, a sign commonly hung outside coffee houses in the 17th century. The pub was rebuilt on the site as the present Black Boy on Old High Street in 1937.
The rebuilt pub used to have a sculpted figure of a black servant in the niche above the entrance, but this was smashed in 1990 and was replaced by the painting of a chimney-sweep’s boy, which was supposedly more politically correct. Even so, in 1997 there was an unsuccessful attempt by Oxford students to get the pub’s name changed on the grounds that it was offensive.
The niche remained empty from about 2008, but now a black horse decorates the façade as a new story is told about the pub taking its name from a racehorse. Watching school children walk by in the afternoon September sunshine, I wondered what any black child in Headington would think of the name of the pub, no matter what explanation or excuse is offered.
The Black Boy at the corner of Barton Lane and Old High Street was rebuilt on the site in 1937 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
I have yet to be convinced by those explanations or excuses. Instead, I visited the White Hart at 12 St Andrew’s Road, across the street from Saint Andrew’s Church. The White Hart dates from the late 17th century, and is believed to have been the inn once known as ‘Joan of Headington’s’. It is a listed building, and retains some of its original panelling and doors.
In the 17th century, Headington was a favourite destination of Oxford academics taking a walk into the country. As the present main road through the centre did not exist at the time, after reaching the top of Headington Hill they would continue along Cuckoo Lane to the alehouse where the Joan of Headington apparently offered more than ale. By 1750, the inn had become more respectable and it was given a new name as the White Hart.
The White Hart was the annual meet for the South Oxfordshire Hounds, and was also a centre for the mummers. A 26 ft-deep well was discovered in the courtyard in 1976, but was covered for safety reasons.
As for the former youth hostel, which I stayed in when I was 17 or 18, it was renamed Dorothea Beale House after one of the founders of St Hilda’s College, its address is now 32B Jack Straw’s Lane, and it is a children’s nursery.
But more about Saint Andrew’s Church and some other churches in Headington, Jack Straw’s Lane and the connections with CS Lewis in the days to come, hopefully.
The White Hart at 12 St Andrew’s Road, across the street from Saint Andrew’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
At its closest, Mars is about 54 million km from Earth
Patrick Comerford
This month is proving to be an exceptionally busy time on this blog, with a continuing, steady and often overwhelming rise in figures for viewing and reading. These figures reached 54 million earlier late last night (10 September 2026), passing the million mark for the sixth time since the end of last month.
The figures reached a total of 53 million hits two days ago (9 September 2026), 52 million hits two days before that (7 September), 51 million late last Saturday (5 September), 50 million the day before (4 September) and 49 million four days previously (31 August).
These viewing and readership figures are still overpowering, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 33 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
This means half of all hits or reader figures have been within the past six months, with 27 million hits since 12 March 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year, the daily figures have often been overwhelming. Of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog, seven of them were in this month alone (1, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 September), two were in May (1 and 14 May) and one was in April (29 April):
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 671,341 (10 September 2026)
• 647,187 (5 September 2026)
• 618,234 (8 September 2026)
• 563,301 (9 September 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 513,725 (7 September 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 407,835 (4 September 2026)
• 356,335 (1 September 2026)
The daily average so far this month is almost 490,000 hits a day. Yet, I recall how 10 years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
The Friarsgate development in Lichfield could not find a private backer to meet its £54 million cost (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Some curious though random statistics help to put this new figure of 54 million into perspective:
Iran’s parliament has debated legislation to pay $54 million to any individual or entity that kills Donald Trump.
Myanmar and Colombia have populations of about 54 million each.
54 million viewers tuned in across Canada, Mexico and the US for the opening matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026 featuring the three host nations.
At its closest, Mars is about 54 million km from Earth … although sometimes it is over 400 million km from Earth – that’s how huge space really is. The closest distance to Mars from Earth was recorded in August 2003.
Friarsgate, a planned shopping and leisure scheme in Lichfield, was axed in 2018 after the local council voted against funding the development. Friarsgate was highly anticipated but could not attract a private backer to meet its £54 million cost which left Lichfield District Council having to decide whether or not to fund the scheme itself. The Birmingham Road Site, including the old bus station and former Tempest Ford garage, has since been broken down into smaller, phased regeneration plans rather than one large single development.
54 million metres is 54,000 km, and 54 million sq m is 54,000 sq km. Indonesia has a coastline of over 54,000 km, the third longest coastline in the world after Canada and Norway.
Nyerere National Park in Tanzania is East Africa’s largest park, and one of the world’s largest wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. It extends to over 54,000 sq km.
The Saharan halophytics is an area of seasonally flooded saline depressions that is home to halophytic (salt-adapted) plant communities. The Saharan halophytics cover 54,000 sq km, including: the Qattara and Siwa depressions in northern Egypt, the Tunisian salt lakes of central Tunisia, Chott Melghir in Algeria, and smaller areas of Algeria, Mauritania, and the southern part of Morocco.
54 million minutes is equal to 102 years and 9 months. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back at the beginning of 1924.
I retired from active parish ministry about 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week.
This evening, as this blog moves beyond 54 million hits, I am truly grateful to the real readers among that 54 million. In particular, I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.
Nyerere National Park in Tanzania extends to over 54,000 sq km or 54 million sq metres and is East Africa’s largest park
The front page of ‘The Irish Times’ reporting the events of 9/11 25 years ago in 2001
Patrick Comerford
The events of ‘9/11’ 25 years ago, on 11 September 2001, are seared into my mind, my memory and my brain. It’s almost as if I can remember every moment of that dreadful, awful day.
At the time, I was the Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times, and had been since 1994. I was invited to lunch by some diplomats at the Korean Embassy in Dublin. On the surface I thought it was a follow-up to a short fellowship programme I had been on in Seoul a few years earlier, with the Korea Foundation and the Institute for Global Economics, in September 1997.
Over lunch, it became obvious those diplomats were working on behalf of the Korean CIA, seeking information on some marginal political figures who had allegedly visited North Korea that year.
I left lunch politely but briskly, leaving the two diplomats with the knowledge that I knew nothing that I could or would share with them. Moments later I was back in The Irish Times, where the News Room, the Foreign Desk and the Subs’ Desk shared the second floor.
It was eerie to walk into that atmosphere. Everyone was gathered around the television screens, watching as the horrors of the day unfolded before our very eyes. When the first plane hit the North Tower, everyone thought it was an accident or a plane crash. By the time the second tower was struck, we all knew the enormity of what was happening.
I was constantly on the phone with Conor O’Clery as he talked, watching the same scenes I was seeing on television, watching as people jumped from the Twin Towers, watching and knowing that this was human tragedy on a scale none of us had probably witnessed before.
He was then The Irish Times US correspondent, and was in Manhattan when the first plane hit the North Tower. I remember graphically how he told me he could see people hanging out of the windows beside and above where the fires were raging. He later wrote: ‘One man waved a white cloth as he clung to a window strut. Then a body fell from a window above him with arms and legs outstretched and plummeted some 100 storeys onto Vesey Street. Two other people fell in the succeeding minutes.’
The first identified Irish deaths that day were Ruth Clifford McCourt (44) from Cork and her four-year-old daughter Juliana who were on board the hijacked plane that hit the South Tower of the World Trade Centre.
I stayed at my desk into the early hours of the following morning as the news was updated constantly. I was one of the first people to hear that Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Wales, was safe in New York, and immediately phoned one of his close friends to let him know.
In all, 2,996 people died in the attacks – 2,977 in the attacks plus the 19 hijackers. At least 18 Irish people died in the 9/11 attacks, an estimated 1,000 victims had strong Irish-American heritage, including many police officers and firefighters.
Alongside Ruth and Juliana McCourt, the other Irish victims include Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar and FDNY chaplain who was officially designated as Victim 0001; Joanne Mary Cregan (32) from Dublin, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the North Tower; Patrick Joseph Currivan (52) from Dublin, a passenger on one of the planes; and Kieran Joseph Gorman (35) from Sligo, working in the South Tower.
Public grief in Ireland was expressed by the thousands if not tens of thousands of people who queued at the US embassy in Ballsbridge to sign the books of condolences. The board of The Irish Times decided not to published the newspaper on Friday 14 September to coincide with the national day of mourning. It was the first time since the Easter Rising in 1916 that The Irish Times was not published.
In the aftermath, neither I nor any of my colleagues were offered – nor did we expect – trauma counselling. We took it as being part of the daily life of working journalists, no matter how deep, searing or lasting the impact and memories of the events that day would be for the rest of our lives.
Today, I am sure, all journalists have been recalling where we were on ‘9/11’ 25 years ago, on 11 September 2001. We have been recalling what we saw before our very eyes, but also thinking of the dead, the maimed, the heroism of rescue teams and first responders, and the unspoken, unutterable impact those events continue to have on our friends and colleagues.
After living through the trauma of September 2001, none of us could or should be labelled as ‘anti-American’. But all this goes some way towards explaining why I am disgusted that the present petulant president of the US has decided not to attend today’s solemn commemorations at Ground Zero.
Many of those memories of 9/11, of terror in the skies and of war, were vivid earlier this year as I flew back through the Gulf after Trump embarked on an illegal war that has neither been sanctioned by Congress nor budgeted for. I was flying from Kuching and Kuala Lumpur, through Muscat on Oman Air to Heathrow.
Trump would be prefer to be in time for the Irish Open at his golf in Doonbeg, Co Clare, than at today’s 9/11 memorial in New York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
All four living former presidents are attending the anniversary commemorations in New York, but it seems Trump has skipped the day, attending a smaller event at the Pentagon, seemingly because the organisers would not allow him to make a political speech.
Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton are there to commemorate the deadliest terrorist attack in US history, but Trump has not turned up, and instead the White House is represented by Vice-President JD Vance. Yet Trump likes to describe himself as a ‘proud New Yorker’ and claims he watched the events of 9/11 with horror.
The political writer and commentator Heather Delaney Reese pointed out earlier this week how often Trump has changed his own versions of where he was and what he did on 9/11.
Last Monday, he posted a video of himself with the words, ‘What Donald Trump saw at … Ground Zero hours after 9/11.’ The video was actually taken days later, on 13 September, when he was blocks away. In the video, he is wearing an immaculate black suit and a crisp white shirt as he told a German news reporter, ‘I have about 100 men working down here … and we have another 100 coming in a little while.’ He continued, ‘I was just down at Ground Zero. It’s a disaster, and I’ve never seen anything like this.’
Hours after he posted that video, he told Fox News a very different story, claiming: ‘I went down … like the following day. Very quickly afterwards, and we worked long and hard.’
Trump is not just saying he sent hundreds of workers to Ground Zero, which has never been proven after 25 years; he is now saying he himself ‘worked long and hard’ at Ground Zero, even though the video he posted this week shows him impeccably dressed without a speck of dust on him.
For 25 years, he peddled many different claims about how he experienced or responded to 9/11. His claim about sending his own workers to Ground Zero has never been verified. No-one has found evidence that Trump helped with the rescue efforts or that he arranged for his workers to join the rescue operation. A New York Newsday reporter spotted him on 13 September and described him wearing the exact same clothes, in the same condition as in the video he shared, down to the impeccably dressed black suit, pressed white shirt and red tie.
Trump has capitalised on the death and destruction that day to make it all about him.
In 2002, on the first anniversary, he said he ‘saw the whole thing’ from his apartment in Midtown Manhattan, four miles from the World Trade Centre, and that he had ‘two windows that are focused on the building’. once again placing himself inside the story of that day.
In 2015, Trump claimed he watched from Jersey City, New Jersey, as ‘thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.’ But, as Heather Delaney Reese points out, that too never happened. It was an invented story to vilify Muslim Americans and to fuel hatred.
In 2016, he claimed he ‘helped a little bit’ to clear rubble at Ground Zero and that year, he also claimed he lost ‘hundreds of friends’ on 9/11. It is simply not believable that his own friends account for 5 or 6% of the people who died that day, and he has never named one of all those supposed friends.
In 2019, Trump boasted: ‘I was down there also … I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there …’ He had a new and different story by the 20th anniversary in 2021, when he claimed he heard creaking at a building near Ground Zero and told first responders, ‘That building is coming down,’ before he was grabbed by ‘two big firemen’ who moved him to safety. Every year, his stories get bigger and more grandiose. Every year, he gets closer to the rubble, works harder, stays longer, and saves more people.
Yet his lies go on, and on, and on. He falsely claimed this week he was lifted out of the rubble on 9/11: ‘Two fireman, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms – ‘got to get our of here!’ – and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me.’
The truth is that Trump capitalises on 9/11. When a $500 million programme was set up to help businesses in Lower Manhattan recover from the economic impact of the attacks, he applied for and got $150,000 from the fund, even though he told a German television reporter on 13 September that his property at 40 Wall Street was not affected. He pledged to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund, although there is no record of that donation ever being made.
It is reported that Trump initially planned to attend today’s events in Manhattan. But he changed his mind after memorial officials reminded his team that politicians do not make political speeches at the site to maintain its nonpartisan stance. Instead, Trump is attending his own service at the Pentagon with Melania Trump, where, no doubt, he will make a vain, rambling, self-glorifying but incoherent monologue.
When Trump’s petulant decision was first reported, he issued a furious denial (28 August), claiming Maggie Haberman of the New York Times had ‘made up the story’. Instead of apologising, he then tried to cover his tracks, claiming: ‘I would love not to speak, because I’m speaking all the time, and this is a day to remember the victims, and their beautiful family members.’
But, perhaps, the real reason Trump is not in New York today is because he is due to travel to Ireland later today to attend the Irish Open at his golf club at his private golf club in Doonbeg, Co Clare, and it is easier and more convenient for him to leave from Andrews air base in Maryland than from New York or New Jersey, according to the New York Times.
America’s allies stood beside the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 – Canada, Germany, Denmark, France Spain, the UK … all 18 allies of the US responded when the US invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty. All that is now forgotten by Trump, who instead calls Vladimir Putin a friend and threatens to annex both Canada and Greenland, which is a sovereign part of Denmark.
Of the 19 men who carried out the 9/11 attacks, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, and there was one each from Egypt and Lebanon. None was from Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan. But Trump is happily cosying up to the Saudi ruling royals and determined that the US should help Saudi Arabia developing its nuclear capabilities.
Putin has not just invaded Ukraine, without any repercussions in his relationship with Trump, but Russia is attacking the very allies who rallied beside the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Germany blames Russia for last month’s drone sabotage at Leipzig airport, calling it part of a ‘long series of attempts at destabilisation, disinformation, threats, sabotage and aggression directed at Europe.’
The Leipzig sabotage is not an isolated event on German soil. Europe has entered a new era of European security, and the Trump regime appears to be on the side of Russia rather on the side of Europe and closest allies, the countries that stood beside the US after 9/11 September, when the US was wounded and afraid and needed the world to stand with it.
The US president seems far more comfortable praising the man threatening NATO allies than standing beside the allies who stood beside the US for decades. Trump has not condemned what happened in Leipzig, he has not used the word sabotage, terrorism, or aggression. Instead, he sent the CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow for secret talks with Russia’s intelligence chiefs, and Trump has said: ‘So far, I think Russia’s behaved quite well.’ This stands in sharp contrast to the way he speaks about Canada, Denmark, Spain, the UK and France, for example.
As Justine McCarthy wrote in The Irish Times last week, Trump is coming to Ireland not because he like Ireland’s 40 shades of green but because he likes golf. She described him as a ‘greasy-fingered sex-offender’.
She said the protesters who take to the streets in the coming days are on the side of the ‘75 million Americans who didn’t vote for him in 2024 and the masses joining them as he free-falls down the opinion polls may find succour in the sight of a picket. Ditto the Greenlanders he wants to rule; the Ukrainians he promised he’d save, within 24 hours, from Russia killing them; the Palestinians whose land he eyed up for a Mar-a-Lago-on-the-Med while Israel was slaughtering them with US weapons; the Spanish he called “hopeless, bad people”; the Canadians he aspires to turn into Americans; the Iranians on whom he has waged an unprovoked war; the Afghans, Haitians and Somalis whose countries he called “shitholes”; the Europeans whose countries he deems to be “decaying” and, as he says: “I know Europe better than anybody”; the women of the world whose bodies he feels entitled to grope, including E Jean Carroll whom he denied sexually assaulting because “she’s not my type”, but a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.’
She added: ‘If the killing of 120 children by a US strike on a school on day one of its war on Iran is insufficiently horrific to cool Ireland’s ardour for Trump, people of west Clare might consider the Cold War landscape that has emerged in their own backyard. Ships set sail from the Shannon estuary with produce from Aughinish Alumina that ends up being smelted in Russia, by companies which supply the Russian military industry. US warplanes stop over at Shannon Airport loaded with soldiers and – for all we know, because there are no inspections – their guns. And up the road in Doonbeg, their president swings a nine iron.’
This is not a state visit, or even an official one, she points out. It’s a jolly for a man whose idea of ‘fun’ is sinking ships. If Irish democracy is worth its salt, it will not hide the protesters away from view by blocking roads and erecting barriers to keep them out of sight, she said. Democracy demands that the people must not only have their say, but that what they say must be heard.
Donald Trump would rather miss the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero today than be late for the Irish Open at his private golf course in Co Clare this weekend. We know now what he thinks of the 9/11 dead, what he thinks of the allies who stood behind the US in the aftermath of 9/11, and he should hear loudly and clearly over the next few days what the Irish people think of him – that he is a felon, that he is a war-monger, that is an authoritarian misfit, and that he has no place in a civilised society other than in a jail.
The National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill, Edinburgh … the first £52 million from the Scottish Local Growth Fund for Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland was released last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
These are exceptionally busy days on this blog, with an overwhelming rise in figures for viewing and reader hits. These figures climbed to a total of 52 million hits by late last night (7 September 2026), passing the million mark for the fourth time since the end of last month and only two days after reaching 51 million late on Saturday night (5 September 2026). These figures come soon after reaching 50 million four days ago (4 September 2026) and 49 million four days previously (31 August 2026).
I continue to find these viewing and readership figures overpowering at times, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 31 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been in little more than six months, with 26 million hits since 1 March 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures are overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog, four were this month (1, 4, 5 and 7 September 2026), two were in May (1 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), and one was in March.
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 647,187 (5 September 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 513,725 (7 September 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 407,835 (4 September 2026)
• 356,335 (1 September 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
The daily average was about 118,700 hits a day throughout August, but it has been about 430,000 a day so far this month. Yet, I recall how 10 years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
Estimates suggest 52 million old paper £50 banknotes are still unreturned across the UK
Some curious though random statistics help to put this new figure of 52 million into context:
Colombia has an area of 1.15 million sq km and a population of around 52 million, and South Korea has a population of almost 52 million.
Westminster City Council recently approved a £52 million package of investment focused on improving neighbourhoods, supporting local businesses and tackling inequalities as part of its 2026/2027 budget.
The UK Government last week released the first £52 million from the £140 million Scottish Local Growth Fund to Edinburgh and South East Scotland, Glasgow, Tay Cities, Ayrshire and Forth Valley. Local leaders across Scotland will decide how this £52 million is spent, backing jobs and growth where they are needed most.
Civilian deaths significantly exceeded military deaths in World War II. Aggregated national estimates indicate approximately 24.8 million military deaths, compared with about 52 million civilian deaths, including roughly 32.1 million from military activity and war crimes and 20 million from war-related famine and disease.
ARP 214 is a peculiar barred spiral galaxy around 52 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear, is a constellation in the Northern Sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name, meaning greater or larger bear, refers to and contrasts it with nearby Ursa Minor, the lesser bear. In antiquity, it was one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE, drawing on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian astronomers. It is the third largest of the 88 modern constellations.
NGC 3079 is a starburst spiral galaxy located 52 million light-years from Earth. It has a horseshoe-shaped structure at its centre that indicates the presence of a supermassive black hole. The structure itself is formed by superwinds from the black hole.
The timing of the collision of continents of the Asian and Indian plates, marking the start of the formation of the Himalayan mountain range, has been subject to much discussion in geology. PhD research by Wentao Huang at Utrecht University has found that this began 52 million years ago.
The Indian and Asian plates started moving towards each other, and met about 52 million years ago. A block from the Indian plate collided with the continental block of the Asian plate, and formed the Himalayas.
It is estimated that 52 million old paper £50 banknotes are still unreturned, sitting in homes or circulating across the UK. The older paper £50 note features Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Paper £20 and £50 notes stopped being accepted as legal tender in October 2022 when they were replaced by polymer plastic versions.
52 million minutes is equal to approximately 98 years, 10 months and 13 days. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in mid-1927.
I retired from active parish ministry about 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week.
This evening, as this blog moves beyond 52 million hits, I am truly grateful to the real readers among that 52 million. In particular, I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.
The Indian and Asian plates started moving towards each other, and met about 52 million years ago. A block from the Indian plate collided with the continental block of the Asian plate, and formed the Himalayas
The ‘Eastern journey of Nicholas II’ a journey of Nicholas II was a 51 million km the included a visit to the Acropolis in Athens
Patrick Comerford
Once more I am overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures reached a total of 51 million shortly before midnight last night (5 September 2026), passing the million mark for the third time within a week. It comes soon after reaching the 50 million early the day before (4 September 2026) and 49 million four days previously (31 August 2026). These figures passed the million mark on three other days last month: 48 million (24 August), 47 million (17 August) and 46 million (9 August).
I continue to find these viewing and reading figures overpowering at times, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 30million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been in little more than six months, with 25.5 million hits since 28 February 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures are overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (1, 4 and 5 September 2026), three were in May (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), and one in March.
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 647,187 (5 September 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 407,835 (4 September 2026)
• 356,335 (1 September 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
The daily average was about 118,700 hits a day throughout August, and has been about 400,000 a day so far this month. Yet, I recall how 10 years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
Souvenir Santas at St James’ Park … Matias Fernandez-Pardo has joined Newcastle United for a reported fee of £51 million (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
To put this new figure of 51 million into context:
Matias Fernandez-Pardo joined Newcastle United this month on a long-term contract from Lille. The 21-year-old forward arrived at St James’ Park for a reported fee of £51 million.
The figure of 51 million people is associated with an extraordinary, incredible and unbelievable claim by Trump that Vladimir Putin actually fought in World War II. In a claim that seems typical of the man’s fantasism, Trump said: ‘I talked to Putin. He lost 51 million people [in World War II] and he did fight … He fought with us in World War II and everybody hates him.’
Putin was born on 7 October 1952. Nor could Trump have ever fought in World War II – he was born on 14 June 1946, and, in any case, he had ‘bone spurs’ when it came to conscription.
More people than ever are listening to UK radio, with the latest figures reporting a record weekly audience of 51 million people.
51 million sq metres is 51,000 sq km – the size of both Bosnia Herzegovina and Costa Rica – and 51 million km is 51,000 km. The ‘Eastern journey of Nicholas II’ in 1890-1891 was a journey made by Nicholas Alexandrovich – then Tsarevich of Russia – around the greater part of Europe and Asia between October 1890 and August 1891.
His journey by rail and sea took him to Vienna, Athens, Alexandria and Egypt, and on to present-day Sri Lanka, India, Java, Singapore, Siam (Thailand) and China. The 51,000 km journey included 15,000 km by rail and 22,000 km by sea. In Japan, the future tsar survived a failed assassination attempt before travelling on to Vladivostok and back to St Petersburg.
51 million minutes, taking account of leap years, is 96 years, 352 days and 16 hours. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in late 1929.
I retired from active parish ministry about 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week.
This evening, as this blog passes 51 million hits, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 51 million hits. In particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.
Gabriele Keenaghan escaped from Vienna on the eve of World War II and is returning there this week to mark her 100th birthday
Patrick Comerford
Gabriele Keenaghan is a Holocaust survivor and former Kindertransport child who escaped from Vienna on the eve of World War II. She has been decorated for her services to Holocaust education and regularly tells her story in the hope of bringing ‘kindness, tolerance and acceptance of diversity’ to others.
The retired head teacher now lives in North Shields and is one of the oldest survivors of the Shoah to have been evacuated from Nazi-occupied Europe by the Kindertransport. This week she is marking the approach of her 100th birthday by returning to Vienna where she was born in 1926.
I began this occasional blog series, ‘Tales of the Viennese Jews,’ in November 2019. I last returned to this theme earlier this year (16 January 2026) following the death of Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor, author, and step-sister of Anne Frank. A year earlier (7 February 2025), I told the stories of Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), the archetypal ‘wild child’ of the 1960s, and of her mother, Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991), a self-styled baroness who resisted the Nazis in Austria.
This occasional series takes its title from the Tales from the Vienna Woods, a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written more than a century and a half ago in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised a Roman Catholic, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for his music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Strauss family’s Jewish identity.
However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of these stories are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz. Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two postings, I decided after visiting Vienna to re-tell some of these stories through this series, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.
A family photograph of the young Gabriele Weiss with her parents, Hildegard and Josef Weiss, in Berlin
The Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle reported earlier this week how Gabriele Keenaghan, a Kindertransport centenarian, is returning to Vienna. She was born Gabriele Franziska Maria Weiss in Vienna on 10 November 1926, an only child who did not even know she was Jewish until after the Nazis invaded Austria.
Her father Josef Weiss was Jewish and manufactured heating stoves. Her mother Hildegard was a Catholic. Family photographs show her as an only child with her parents, and include photographs with her parents in Berlin and visits to the Vienna Woods with her great-aunt Maria who was also her godmother.
After her mother died suddenly in 1935, Gabriele was brought up by her grandmother, also called Gabriele. She never knew her father was Jewish until after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in the Anschluss on 12 March 1938. She was a boarder at a Catholic convent school when the Nazis came and told the girls they would all be moving.
She was labelled a mischling, a pejorative term meaning ‘mixed’. ‘I was the only one left standing,’ she recalled in an interview with Mark Brown of the Guardian, and she wondered: ‘What’s happening to me?’ She was told she would have to go to a Jewish school and have a yellow star of David sewn on to her coat.
‘They called me “a dirty little Jew” … it was upsetting.’ But, she recalls, ‘I hadn’t realised that my father was a Jew. I didn’t know. I don’t think I even knew what being a Jew meant.’
From then, she was verbally and physically assaulted on her way to and from school, and she was now forbidden from entering the park to play with her friends by a sign declaring ‘Jude Verboten’.
The events of Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 came on the eve of her 12th birthday. Gabriele never saw her father again: he was deported to Łódź in Poland and she believes he either died in the ghetto or was sent to be murdered in Auschwitz.
Her grandmother made arrangements for her to be taken out of Austria on a Kindertransport, the scheme that brought about 10,000 Jewish children to Britain as refugees.
She was still only 12 when she said goodbye to her grandmother and left on a train with 150 other children. They arrived the Netherlands, and from there they were sent by boat to Harwich and on to Liverpool Street station in London.
Gabriele quickly learned English and in January 1940 the Catholic Committee for Refugees moved her from Aldershot to Ashford, where she boarded at the Convent of Notre Dame. When she turned 16 In 1942, she was classified as an ‘enemy alien’ because of her Austrian nationality. She was moved again to a convent in Mill Hill, north London, and then trained in nursery nursing and Montessori education.
One of her first jobs was as a nanny to the Richardson family in Woldingham, Surrey. She has vivid memories of sheltering in air raid shelters during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941 and of VE Day, standing in front of Buckingham Palace.
After World War II, she studied at a teacher training college, and later became headmistress of a school in Newcastle. She met her husband, John ‘Ken’ Keenaghan, an RAF navigator with an Irish Catholic background and stationed in Bedford. They married in 1953 and raised their family in Wallsend. Later she became a middle-school head teacher and has fond memories of her career, the children and her teacher colleagues.
She returned to Austria each year to see relatives, especially her grandmother, who died in 1974.
She is now 99 and her actual 100th birthday is not until November. But she is marking her birthday a little early this year, returning this week with several generations of her family, including her daughters Pat and Christine to Westbahnhof, the train station she left Vienna from almost 90 years ago.
She continues to share her frightening and terrifying childhood experiences and has spoken many times to children about her experiences. ‘I hope they have learned something from it,’ she said this week. ‘But do we ever learn? Look at the world, look at the state it is in now.’
Gabriele Keenaghan told her story in a short book, My Story Gabriele Keenaghan BEM, published by the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) in 2021 (here).
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
Gabriele Keenaghan in her childhood visiting the Vienna Woods with her great aunt Maria
A statue of Eirene, the Greek goddess of Peace, with a laurel wreath and a cornucopia, at Vergina restaurant in Platanias, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In Greek mythology, Eirene (Εἰρήνη) was the goddess of peace, and she was a symbol of spring, wealth and order. She is depicted in art her statues and in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre and a torch or rhyton. She is usually said to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis and the sister of Dike and Eunomia.
The Greek word εἰρήνη (eirēnē) means peace, quiet and rest. In ancient Greek, it meant a time without war but it also speaks of more than just a lack of war: it describes wholeness, harmony, quietness, and a state of general well-being or flourishing.
It comes from a word that means to join together. Peace brings things back into a whole. It comes from verb εἴρω (eiro), to join or bind together that which has been separated, binding or joining together again what had been separated or divided and thus setting at one again.
Older theories also link the word εἴρω (eírō), ‘to speak, say’. We might compare it with the word ῥήτρα (rhḗtra), a verbal agreement or treaty.
A poster for a Shadow Puppet Theatre production of ‘Eirene’ by Aristophenes in Thessaloniki
The idea of the Common Peace (Κοινὴ Εἰρήνη, Koinē Eirēnē) was one of the most influential concepts of 4th century BCE Greek political thought, along with the idea of Panhellenism. The term described both the concept of a desirable, permanent peace between the Greek city-states (πόλεις, poleis) and a sort of peace treaty that fulfilled the three fundamental criteria of this concept: it had to include all the Greek city-states, it had to recognise the autonomy and equality of all city states without regard for their military power, and it had to be intended to remain in force permanently.
The advocates of the Common Peace saw it as a way to end the endemic warfare which engulfed the Greek poleis after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE. From the King’s Peace of 387-386 BCE down to the foundation of the League of Corinth in 338 BCE, the idea of the Common Peace influenced all peace treaties between Greek poleis. In the end, however, it turned out that only a strong hegemonic power could maintain a comprehensive peace for long.
The concept has been revived in modern times, and in the 20th century it was a foundation stone of international organisations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.
‘Eirene’ by Aristophenes continues to appeal to adults and children alike in Greece
The Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible regularly uses εἰρήνη to translate the Hebrew shalom (שלום), a word that embraces completeness, prosperity, and relational harmony with God, neighbour, and creation. Priestly benedictions, such as Numbers 6: 26, anticipated a day when the Lord would ‘give you peace’. First-century Jews greeted one another with ‘peace’, and Jesus’ disciples continued the practice (see Luke 10: 5-6).
In the Greek New Testament, the word εἰρήνη (eirēnē) or peace is much like the Hebrew word shalom (שלום). It occurs over 90 times, and means inner calm, well-being, and right relationships with others. Well-known and well-loved examples include:
• πορεύου εἰς εἰρήνην, Go in Peace (Luke 7: 50; 8: 48);
• ἰρήνη τῷ οἴκῳ τούτῳ, Peace to this house (Luke 10: 5);
• Εἰρήνη ἀφίημι ὑμῖν, εἰρήνην τὴν ἐμὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν, My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you (John 14: 27);
• Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν, Peace be with you (Luke 24: 36; John 20: 19, 20-21, 26).
Every Pauline letter opens with the twin blessing ‘grace and peace’ (for example, see Romans 1: 7; Ephesians 1: 2) and most conclude with a similar wish (see Romans 15: 33). Peter, John and Jude follow the same pattern (see I Peter 1: 2; II John 1: 3; Jude 1: 2). These formulas are more than courteous salutations – they declare and confer the benefits of God’s favour and covenant well-being on those who receive the greeting.
Saint Irene (left), Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara … three women saints in a fresco in the Church of Panagia Dexia in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the Greek Orthodox tradition and in popular Greek piety today, there are three popular saints with the name Irene.
Saint Irene, Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara are three saints who are often found together in icons and frescoes in Greek churches. They form a traditional grouping, such as the Apostles Peter and Paul, as an icon of Church Unity, Saint Paul and Sant Barnabas or Saint Paul and Saint Titus as missionary companions, the three Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus), and the Three Holy Hierarchs (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom).
Saint Irene is one of three saints and sisters – Irene, Agape and Chioni – who were born in Thessaloniki and who were martyred there for their faith in the year 304 CE. Their names mean Peace, Love and Purity, and their feast day is on 3 April.
The story of their martyrdom is the subject of Dulcitius, a 10th-century Latin drama by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, the first-known female playwright.
Irene, Agape and Chione were brought before Dulcitius, governor of Macedonia, on the charge of refusing to eat food that had been offered in sacrifice to the gods. When Agape and Chionia again refused to eat this food, they were burned alive.
Dulcitius found that Irene was keeping prohibited Christian books that she had taken with her when she fled to the mountains. Dulcitius ordered Irene to be stripped and exposed in a brothel. When no one mistreated her in the brothel, the governor gave Irene a second chance. When she refused this, Dulcitius sentenced her to death and her books found were burned with her.
Saint Irene (752-803), a Byzantine empress who was instrumental in restoring the use of icons in the Orthodox Church … a fresco in a church in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
A second significant Saint Irene in the Orthodox Calendar is Saint Irene (752-803), a Byzantine empress who was instrumental in restoring the use of icons in the Orthodox Church. She was the wife of the Byzantine emperor Leo IV, and when her husband died in 780, she became guardian of their 10-year-old son, Constantine VI, and co-emperor with him. Later that year she crushed a plot by the iconoclasts or opponents of the use of icons to put Leo’s half-brother, Nicephorus, on the throne.
The use of icons had been prohibited since 730. When one of the Empress Irene’s supporters, Tarasius, was elected patriarch of Constantinople, he summoned the Council of Constantinople in 786 and then the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787 and restored the reverence of images.
Constantine VI banished his mother from court, but she later had her son arrested and blinded. From 797, she reigned alone as emperor for five years until she was deposed in 802 and exiled to the island of Lesbos. She is remembered for her zeal in restoring icons and her feast day is celebrated on 9 August.
Saint Irene of Lesbos with Saint Raphael and Saint Nicholas … an icon in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
There is a third Saint Irene in the Greek Orthodox tradition and popular piety: Saints Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene of Lesbos (Ραφαήλ, Νικόλαος και Ειρήνη) are venerated as saints and martyrs.
According to legend, they lived on the island of Lesbos in the 15th century and were killed by Turkish raiders on 9 April 1463. Raphael was the abbot of the monastery of Karyes, near the village of Thermi, Nicholas was a deacon in the monastery, and Irene was the 12-year-old daughter of the village mayor: she was brutally executed and burned inside a clay cask in front of her parents.
The site of their martyrdom was excavated in 1959 and the relics of the saints are kept in a monastery that was rebuilt on Karyes, about 12 km from Mytilene, the island capital. The three saints were canonised in 1970. The monastery has become a prominent centre of pilgrimage.
A quiet corner in the monastery of Agia Irini, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
One of my favourite places in Rethymnon for peace and quiet, with time to be calm and to pray is the Monastery of Aghia Irini, about 5 km south of Rethymnon in the mountains above the town, and one of the oldest monasteries in Crete. Various accounts say it was founded sometime between 961 and 1204, and it was certainly built before 1362, when it is escribed in a Venetian document.
The monastery was destroyed several times during the many revolutions in Crete against Ottoman rule. During the last Cretan revolution of 1897-1898, the Turks burnt the monastery, the ruined monastery was formally closed in 1900, and the ruins remained deserted throughout most of the 20th century.
Sister Akaterina, who once brought me on a tour of the monastery some years ago, told of how the Metropolitan of Rethymnon, the late Bishop Theodoros Tzedakis, had a vision in 1989 for its restoration and invited a group of nuns to form a new community at Aghia Irini.
The nuns moved into the buildings and restoration work began in 1990. At the time, Aghia Irini was a jumble of dilapidated buildings. Today, it must be one of the most beautiful monasteries in Crete, and the restoration work has received architectural and cultural awards. The church was officially opened in 2003, and was consecrated in 2011 by Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria. The buildings include an older three-aisled church of Saint Irene, Saint Catherine and Saint Euphemia.
An icon of Aghia Irini (Αγία Ειρήνη) or Saint Irene by Alexandra Kaouki … a present from Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
When I was in Rethymnon last year for a five-day ‘mini-retreat’ in Crete during Holy Week and Easter, my friend Alexandra Kaouki (Αλεξανδρα Καουκι), one of the foremost icon writers in Rethymnon today, gave me a gift of one of her early icons, depicting Aghia Irini (Αγία Ειρήνη) or Saint Irene, completed in 2012.
Saint Irene seemed such a special choice for me that weekend. Alexandra explained how she thought it was appropriate for me because of my campaigning past, as the saint’s name means ‘Peace’, and because I had written appreciatively in the past about Aghia Irini convent in the hills above Rethymnon.
A fresco depicting Saint Irene or Aghia Irini by Alexandra Kaouki in a church in Rethymnon
