Patrick Comerford
This has been a year that no-one could have predicted: the war that has engulfed Gaza, Israel and Palestine since 7 October, the war that continues in Ukraine and Russia and that is about to enter its third year, the return of Covid (almost with a vengeance), the rise in the cost of living that is drawing more and more families into an ever-descending vortex of poverty, and the housing crisis in Britain, Ireland and many other European countries.
This year has seen the continuing rise of the far-right reach new heights and given expression in the election results in the Netherlands, the frightening rise of antisemitism across the world, the abhorrent prospect of Donald Trump returning to power, the attacks on migrants in Dublin in May, the racist riots in Dublin in November and the attack on an hotel in Co Galway shortly before Christmas.
The sad message to many migrants arriving in Ireland, Britain – and in many other countries – this Christmas was definitely: ‘There is no room in the inn.’
The so-called ‘mainstream right’ has been seen to embrace the far-right. It went almost unnoticed in the British media that Rishi Sunak embraced the Italian prime minister and had taken part in a rally organised by her party, the political heir to Mussolini’s fascists. I have tried to image how the Daily Mail or the Daily Express would respond to a Labour politician attending a similar event with the political heirs of Stalin in central or eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, that sector of the media refuses to take the government to task for the failure to fund the NHS properly and to invest in its ffuture. The very people who thought up the slogan on the big red bus during the Brexit campaign have very short memories indeed. The by-election results in Tamworth and many other constituencies offer some hope for an interestng general election in 2024.
This has been the hottest year on record, and everyone feels the consequences of global warming, with rising temperatures and rising flood waters.
In Greece, it was a year of two elections, a year when it seemed thousands of migrants would have their status legitimised to cope with labour shortages, when peace and co-operation with Turkey seemed possible, and the debate over the Parthenon marbles reached new levels when Rishi Sunak lost his marbles and snubbed the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during a visit to London.
In Ireland, the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement was marked not so much by Joe Biden’s visit but by the DUP continuing to boycott the Stormont Assembly and Sinn Fein MPs continuing to refuse to take their seats in Westminster.
In Rugby, this was the year Ireland won the Grand Slam but lost to New Zealand in the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup.
This was also a year that saw Irish people being rescued from the conflict in Sudan, the year of the downfall of Ryan Tubridy, of Dee Forbes and of the board of RTÉ.
This year also saw the deaths of two Big Bens: Ben Dunne and Ben Briscoe. It was cringing to hear Sinn Fein politicians pay tribute to Ben Dunne, without mentioning that the IRA had kidnapped him and that the ransom money probably paid for many Sinn Fein and IRA activities.
This was the year Ireland mourned Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, and Christy Dignam of Aslan. But there were other great Irish cultural figures who died this year too, including the Kilkenny-born playwright Tom Kilroy, the artists Camille and Souter Graham Knuttel, the historian Dermot Keogh, the Jesuit theologian and sociologist Micheál Mac Gréil, and the Dublin-born actor Michael Gambon.
Former colleagues in The Irish Times who died during the year include Noel McFarlane, Derek Richards, Iain Pratt, Michael Viney and Peter Thursfield.
Among my friends and other colleagues who died this year were Canon Anna Matthews of Cambridge, who had often asked me to return and preach in Saint Bene’t’s Church; Jane Dayus-Hinch, who I got to know through many activities in Lichfield; Professor Petros Florides of TCD, the Cypriot-born mathematician who was always quick to describe me as a ‘true Philhellene’; Patsy Lyle, a former President of the Irish Hellenic Society; Canon John McKegney, who once invited me to Armagh to preach through Good Friday; and the Revd Maedbh O’Herlihy, who was always welcoming in Achill and who fought a brave battle with Motor Neurone Disease. Pat Arrowsmith, who I knew in my CND days also died this year.
Two of my former lecturers also died this year: the Augustinian theologian Gabriel Daly had taught on some of the modules at the Irish School of Ecumenics, and I had attended lectures in Cambridge and Thessaloniki by the Orthodox theologian Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon.
Deaths in my extended family included my ‘distant cousin’ Kevin Martin (ז״ל) in June, shortly after we had lunch in London. We had a shared interest in family history and Sephardic genealogy, including the overlapping stories of the Comerford, Mendoza, Martinez or Martin and Nunez families. I had missed the opportunity to celebrate Hanukkah and his birthday with him in Golder’s Green a year ago. But we had kept in touch week-by-week and we had hoped to meet again soon.
Francis Maurice (Frank) Comerford (1927-2023), who died in London earlier this year at the age of 95, was the longest-serving leader of the 143-year-old The Stage newspaper and digital platform.
Although I never did manage to keep that promise to myself to get back to Greece this year, there was some interesting travel this year. This included visits with Charlotte to Hungary and Finland on behalf of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), to see church-linked projects working with Ukrainian refugees in Budapest and Helsinki. We also visited Prague to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday in the Czech capital.
In addition, there were five visits to Ireland this year. I was in Dublin in March to carry out research in the RCB Library for a chapter in a book that was published in Limerick later in the year. I stayed in Rathmines, and took this opportunity for a return visit to the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.
There were two family birthdays in Dublin, when I stayed in Rathmines in June and in Camden Street in August.
We were in Dublin again in June, and stayed in Burlington Road while I was being interviewed in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, by television programme makers from Montenegro. They are producing a documentary about Prince Milo of Montenegro, who is buried at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and Marko Zekov Popović, the ‘Hereditary Royal Standard Bearer of Montenegro’, whose ashes are in an urn on a shelf in Christ Church Cathedral.
I missed the launch in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, at the end of November of Christmas and the Irish, a new collection of essays edited by Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth, and that includes three contributions from me. I so wanted to be at this book launch – but only realised when I got to Luton Airport that I had left my passport back in Stony Stratford. Even seasoned and experienced travellers can make the daftest of mistakes.
My fifth visit to Dublin this year – it ought to have been my sixth – was a family visit in the week before Christmas, when I stayed once again in Rathmines.
There have been opportunities too to travel around England this year, with many visits to London, Oxford, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Tamworth, Lichfield and York. The cathedrals I have visited this year include Christ Church in Dublin and in Oxford, the two cathedrals in Coventry, Southwark and Saint Paul’s in London, Northampton Cathedral, York Minster, and, of course, Lichfield Cathedral, as well as the ruins of Osney Abbey and Whitby Abbey and the cathedrals in Budapest, Helsinki and Prague.
We stayed in York twice this year (in May and September-October), with visits to Knaresborough, Harrogate, Whitby and Whitby Abbey, Hebden Bridge, Heptonstall and Bishopthorpe. We visited the locations of ‘Happy Valley’ and the grave of Sylvia Plath, walked on the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay, and I also attended the Choral Eucharist in York Minster.
Nearer to home, there have been day trips or ‘escapades’ visiting cities, town and villages near here, including Coventry, Rugby, Long Buckby, Aylesbury, Buckingham, Bicester, Berkhamsted, Bletchley, Crick and Winslow. And there have been days I have wandered aimlessly around Milton Keynes and Campbell Park, looking out for interesting sculptures and public art.
I was back in Lichfield at least five times, with walks around Stowe Pool, Minster Pool and along Cross in Hand Lane and a two-day self-guided retreat in Lichfield Cathedral, and I was in Tamworth three or four times, visiting both the Moat House and Comberford itself. My continuing family history research also brought me to Yelvertoft, where Canon Henry Comberford of Lichfield Cathedral was once the rector; Watford, by the Watford Gap, in search of the former Comberford Manor; and Wednesbury, which had links with the Comberford family in the 16th and 17th centuries.
I am retired and I have no official role in the Diocese of Oxford. But I renewed my ordination vows in Christ Church, Oxford, at the Chrism Eucharist on Maundy Thursday. I sing in the Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and alternate my Sunday church attendance between Stony Stratford, and Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton.
I find collegiality, friendship and support in the monthly meetings of the Milton Keynes Chapter of clergy, I have become a trustee of the Retreat, a Church-linked almshouse in Stony Stratford with four residents in four residential units, and Tamworth and District Civic Society invited me to say grace at their annual dinner in the Castle Hotel earlier this year.
I continue to search for and photograph synagogues and the sites of historic synagogues, with visits to synagogues and their sites in London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Northampton, Oxford, Bletchley, Wolverton, New Bradwell, Haversham, Berkhamsted, Knaresborough, Dublin, Budapest, Helsinki and return visits to synagogues in Prague, with a first-time visit to the Jerusalem synagogue in Prague.
This interest brought an invitation to speak in Milton Keynes and District Reformed Synagogue on ‘Synagogues of the World’ in April and to take part in the synagogue’s Open Day on 10 September.
Although I am no longer a trustee, I continue to engage in voluntary work for USPG. This year this has included editing the Lenten study guide, visiting Hungary and Finland, speaking as a volunteer at the Daventry Deanery Synod in Badby in Northamptonshire (Diocese of Peterborough), and taking part in the annual reunion in London. Sadly, I missed this year’s conference in Yarnfield Park in Stone, Staffordshire.
My writings and publications this year included co-authoring with Professor Panos Karagiorgas a bilingual, Greek/English book on the Philhellenes, published in Thessaloniki; editing Who is Our Neighbour?, this year’s Lenten study with USPG; a number of pieces in The Irish Times, including a major feature arising from my visit with USPG to Ukrainian refugees in Hungary and Finland; three essays in Salvador Ryan’s Christmas and the Irish; a chapter in a book in Limerick marking the ‘Decade of Centenaries’; and a journal paper on JD Bernal and his Sephardic family background.
In addition, I had photographs published in five books and one journal.
These publications this year have included:
• ‘The Sephardic family roots and heritage of John Desmond Bernal, Limerick scientist’, pp 60-66 in The Old Limerick Journal, ed Tom Donovan (Limerick: Limerick Museum, 72 pp), No 58, Winter 2023, with nine photographs.
• ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’, Chapter 6, pp 83-89, in Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912-1923, ed Seán William Gannon and Brian Hughes (Limerick: Limerick City & County Council, 2023); with three photographs, pp 70-71.
• ‘The ‘Wexford Carol’ and the mystery surrounding some old and popular Christmas carols’, pp 72-77 in Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2023, 403 pp, €25), with a photograph on p 71.
• ‘Molly Bloom’s Christmas Card: where Joycean fiction meets a real-life family’ is published in Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2023, 403 pp, €25), pp 151-155, with a photograph on p 155.
• ‘‘We Three Kings of Orient are’: an Epiphany carol with Irish links’, pp 103-107 in Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2023, 403 pp, €25).
• <<Ο Sir Richard Church και οι Ιρλανδοι Φιλελληνες στον Πολεμο των Ελληνων για την Ανεξαρτησια>>, pp 53-75, in Πανος Καραγιώργος και Patrick Comerford, Ο Φιλελληνισμος και η Ελληνικη Επανασταση του 1821 (Θεσσαλονικη: Εκδοτικος Οικος Κ κ Σταμουλη, 2023, 78 pp).
• Who is Our Neighbour? (London: USPG, 2023, 48 pp), editor and Introduction, pp 5-6; a six-session study course for Lent 2023.
• A photograph (p 137) in: Jack Kavanagh, Always Ireland, An Insider’s Tour of the Emerald Isle (Washington DC: National Geographic, 2023, 336 pp, hb, $35).
• The cover photograph on: Tim Vivian, A Doorway into Thanks: Further Reflections on Scripture (Austin Macauley Publishers, London, Cambridge, New York, Sharjah, 2023, $14.95).
• Three photographs (pp 78, 165, 355) in: Hellgard Leckebusch, Singing our Song, the Memoirs of Hellgard Leckebusch (1944-2023), eds, Silke Püttmann and Kenneth Ferguson (Mettmann, NRW, Germany: Silke Püttmann, 2023, e-book).
I was the subject of a major interview with the American online journal ‘Profiles in Catholicism.’ I continue to blog each day, including a prayer diary each morning. This blog passed a number of landmarks a few weeks ago, passing the figure of 7 million hits in mid-August and 7.5 million hits at the end of November.
I have been asked to contribute to the Tamworth Heritage Magazine in 2024, I have been invited to write the foreword or prologue to a new bilingual book on Greek folk songs to be published in Thessaloniki early in the new year, a book review is about to be published in an Orthodox theological journal in India, and I have been asked to write a substantial paper for the launch of new theological e-journal being launched early in 2024. There are other active writing plans for the coming months, as well as photographs in two or three more forthcoming books.
Healthwise, I had a stroke last year (18 March 2022), but I am a stroke survivor not a stroke victim. I have sarcoidosis, but sarcoidosis does not have me. I have a severe Vitamin B12 deficiency, but I live a full and fulfilling life. I continued to have check-ups this year in hospitals in Oxford and Milton Keynes as they monitor and follow-up the effects of my stroke. I continue to receive regular B12 injections and to receive medication for my sarcoidosis.
My walking average is not as high as I hoped, but I have managed to keep the daily average above 4 km throughout the year, with hopes to improve on this next year.
Perhaps the most difficult problems, emotionally, legally and socially, were not health issues but the drawn-out court proceedings that eventually ended with the finalisation of my divorce case in Birmingham on 30 August. I hope never again to face not only the many legal problems and court cases, but also the online bullying that continues on at least one Facebook page from which I have been blocked, including wishes that I die soon and that I rot in hell.
But life is good. The highlight of the year was, undoubtedly, when Charlotte and I got married in Camden Town Hall on 3 November, with a reception for a very small group in the Boot and Flogger, a restaurant in Southwark, and the church blessing in the Harvard Chapel in Southwark Cathedral on 4 November.
I made plans last night for that long-promised return visit to Greece. I also hope thatin the year ahead of us Britain gets the election and the result the nation deserves.
What can I expect – what can any of us expect – in the year to come?
In my prayer diary on this blog earlier today, I referred to the theme this week in the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG, which is ‘Looking to 2024 – Freedom in Christ.’ This theme is introduced today by the Revd Duncan Dormor, USPG General Secretary, who says that ‘as we step into the new year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place … We do not know what lies ahead in 2024.’
He continues: ‘We can only step forward, as Paul noted, ‘by faith and not by sight.’
‘As individuals, as flesh and blood, we all crave freedom and security – freedom from injustice and violence, and the security that a good livelihood, friends, community, just laws and the government bring. And so our hearts naturally go out to all who live with deep insecurity and oppression.
‘As we are called by God to walk faithfully through 2024, so are we called to a freedom rooted in Christ. This is an active, life-giving freedom, a freedom that reaches out towards others.
‘It is expressed in our solidarity with our sisters and brothers, and with our neighbours, global and local. A solidarity that sets people free, ourselves and others. It begins when we come before our loving God in prayer, and it equips us for the walk ahead.’
May you be equipped for your walk ahead next year.
