Sir William Robinson from Westmeath is remembered 150 years later in streets and developments in Singapore

Modern Singapore has been strongly influenced by Irish-born governors, developers and architects (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am sorry to have missed the opportunity to be back in Singapore and Kuching during these weeks. I have missed some family gatherings, including a wedding in Kuching last weekend, and a visit last week to the Marina Bay Sands, a landmark in Singapore and one of the great architectural works by Moshe Safdie, who is one of thes greatest living architects today.

Last year, I looked at the influence of Irish figures and Irish developers and architects on the political life and the landscape of both Singapore and Kuching.

Sir Orfeur Cavenagh (1820-1891), who had family roots in Co Wexford and Co Kildare, lived in Singapore as the Governor of the Straits Settlements in from 1859 to 1867. William Cuppage (1807-1871), who first began to develop Emerald Hill almost 200 years ago, named Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage and Clare Grove after his family’s homes in Ireland.

The architects include including George Drumgoole Coleman (1795-1844) from Drogheda, who designed the original Saint Andrew’s Cathedral and many public buildings, Denis Lane McSwiney (1800-1867) from Cork who designed the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Singapore and Denis Santry (1879-1960), also from Cork, who designed many public buildings in both Singapore and Kuching.

I aslo came across a member of the Comerford family, Gerald Francis Commerford, who was held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war in Singapore and Borneo during World War II.

Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson (1834-1897) was in Singapore as the Governor of the Straits Settlement for almost three yers from 1877 to 1879

Another key Irish-born figure in Singapore was Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson (1834-1897), a colonial administrator and composer, who wrote several well-known songs. Robinson only spent a short time in Singapore as the Governor of the Straits Settlement, less than three years from 1877 to 1879, and for most of his colonial career he was based in Australia. But he has left his mark in Singapore in street names and property developments.

Despite his name, Robinson was not connected with the well-known business of Robinson and Cleaver on the corner of Donegall Square and Donegall Place in Belfast. Instead, Robinson was descended from distinguished landed families in Ireland, each with a strong presence in the Church of Ireland. His father, Admiral Hercules Robinson (1789-1864), was present with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and later was the Sheriff of Westmeath in 1842.

Hercules Robinson took his unusual first name from his maternal grandfather, Sir Hercules Langrishe (1729-1811) of Knocktopher Abbey, Co Kilkenny, an MP for Kilkenny in Grattan’s Parliament and a vocal advocate of Catholic Emancipation.

The admiral’s father, the Revd Christopher Robinson, the Rector of Granard, Co Longford, while his mother, Elizabeth Langrishe, was a sister of James Langrishe (1765-1847), Dean of Achonry and Archdeacon of Glendalough, and a first cousin of both Robert Tottenham (1773-1850), Bishop of Clogher, who lived at Woodstock, Co Wicklow, and John Loftus (1770-1845), 2nd Marquess of Ely, who inherited Loftus Hall, Co Wexford, and Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin.

Rosmead, the Robinson family home near Delvin, Co Westmeath, has been abandoned and derelict since 1940 (Photograph: Willie Forde Photography)

William Robinson was born on 14 January 1834 in Rosmead, his mother’s family home near Delvin, Co Westmeath, halfway between Mullingar and Kells. He was the fourth son of Admiral Hercules Robinson and his wife Frances Elizabeth Wood (1794-1873), the only daughter and heir of Henry Wildman Wood (1720-1795). Rosmead was built in the early 1700s by the Wood family and passed to the Robinson family after Hercules Robinson and Frances Elizabeth Wood married in 1822.

William Robinson was educated at home in Co Westmeath, and at the Royal Naval School, a private boarding in New Cross, Surrey. At the end of his school days, the indebted Robinson family were forced to sell the Rosmead estate in Westmeath in the Encumbered Estates Court. George Charles Mostyn (1804-1883), 6th Lord Vaux of Harrowden, bought the estate in 1852.

The Robinson estate included 1,564 acres at Rosmead, an additional 1,630 acres in Co Westmeath, 1,182 in Co Kilkenny, 677 in Co Meath, and 1,460 in Co Mayo. The sale of the contents alone took three days and included three grand pianofortes, a library with 1,162 books and a painting by Van Dyck.

Meanwhile, William Robinson joined the staff of the Colonial Office in 1858 as a private secretary to his brother, Hercules Robinson, who was Lieutenant Governor of St Kitts, and then accompanied him to Hong Kong in 1859.

William was appointed the President (Viceroy or Governor) of Montserrat in the West Indies in 1862. That same year, he married Olivia Edith Deane Townsend, a daughter of Thomas Stewart Townsend (1800-1852), briefly Dean of Lismore and Dean of Waterford (1850), and then Bishop of Meath (1850-1852).

Robinson was posted to Dominica and then was the Governor of the Falkland Islands (1866-1870), which he described as a ‘remote settlement at the fag end of the world’; Prince Edward Island (1870-1873), where he oversaw the island being incorporated into Canada in 1873; the Leeward Islands (1874); and, for his first time, Governor of Western Australia (1875-1877).

Robinson was appointed governor of the Straits Settlements in 1877. The Straits Settlements came under British control as a crown colony in 1867. It originally consisted of the four individual settlements of Singapore, Penang, Malacca and Dinding; Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands were added in 1886, and the island of Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, was incorporated into the colony in 1907. Most of the territories now form part of Malaysia, from which Singapore was expelled in 1965.

Robinson arrived in Singapore in 1877, ten years after the Straits Settlements had become a British crown colony. The governor was also High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States on the peninsula, and for British North Borneo, the Sultanate of Brunei and Sarawak in Borneo, ruled from Kuching by the Brooke dynasty.

At the time of his appointment to Singapore, Robinson was knighted (KCMG). From Singapore, he oversaw British interests in Bangkok in 1878, and received awards from the King of Siam (Thailand).

Sir William Robinson left Singapore for Australia in 1880

After his time in Singapore, Robinson later served as Governor of Western Australia for a second term (1880-1883) and Governor of South Australia (1883-1889), and was promoted in the knighthood to GCMG in 1887. He found his role as Governor of South Australia was primarily symbolic and social, and was probably bored during that time there. But he was passionate about music, playing the violin and the piano and singing, and he relieved his boredom in South Australia in musical events. He wrote many songs and composed a comic opera that was staged at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne.

He turned down an opportunity to become Governor of Hong Kong, saying he did not want to undergo its harsh climate. He was the acting Governor of Victoria in 1889, and rejected an invitation to become Governor of Mauritius. After an interlude in London, he returned for a third term as the Governor of Western Australia (1890-1895). He managed the transition of the colony to self-rule and chose John Forrest as the first Premier of Western Australia.

He retired from his colonial career in March 1895, at age 61. He moved back to England and became the director of many companies. He died on 2 May 1897 in South Kensington, London. He and his wife Olivia were the parents of two daughters and three sons. He left £84,058 in his will – the equivalent of almost £14 million today.

William Robinson often lived in the shadow of his brother, Hercules Robinson (1824-1897), another Irish-born colonial governor whose career included being Governor of Hong Kong, Governor of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Governor of New South Wales, the first Governor of Fiji, Governor of New Zealand, two terms as High Commissioner for Southern Africa, and two terms as Governor of the Cape Colony. When Hercules was made a member of the House of Lords in 1896 he chose the title of Baron Rosmead of Rosmead, Co Westmeath.

But by then the Mostyn family had put the Rosmead estate up for sale again in the Landed Estates Court in 1879. There were proposals for its adaptation ‘for religious use’ in 1933. The designs by the Dublin architect Ralph Henry Byrne (1877-1946) including the creation of an oratory.

But these proposals came to nothing. The porch and the roof were removed in 1940, much of the house was dismantled, and some of the stone work used to rebuild Balrath, Co Meath, in 1942. Since then, the house has lain in ruins.

Sir William Robinson is remembered in the names of streets and developments in Singapore, including Robinson Road, Robinson Square, Robinson Centre and Robinson Point

But Sir William Robinson is remembered in the names of streets and developments in Singapore, including Robinson Road, Robinson Square, Robinson Centre and Robinson Point.

Robinson Road is a major trunk road in the Central Area that stretches from Maxwell Road to Finlayson Green. The land on which Robinson Road stands was created through land reclamation that began in 1879. It was a coastal road until more land reclamation from the early 1900s to 1932 shifted the shoreline further east to make room for building Shenton Way.

Today, Robinson Road is flanked by major skyscrapers and several developments, including Robinson Centre and Robinson Point. For years, the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Chinese daily Sin Chew Jit Poh were on Robinson Road.

Crosby House, a seven-storey office complex, is a landmark at the corner of Robinson Road and McCallum Street. It was once owned by the Standard Chartered Bank and later by Singtel. Buildings along Robinson Road include architecture built in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the curved Telecoms Building – previously known as the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company (1927) and then Cable and Wireless Building, and later the Ogilvy Centre. The building now houses So Sofitel Singapore, a five-star hotel.

In Australia, Robinson Avenue, Robinson Road and Cleaver Street in central Perth were named after Robinson, as well as Port Robinson, a natural harbour in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Of course, there were other colonial governors in Singapore who were born in Ireland or who came from Irish families.

General Sir Andrew Clarke (1824-1902), who was the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1873-1875, was a son of Colonel Andrew Clarke (1793-1847), another colonial governor, who was born in Lifford, Co Donegal. The younger Andrew Clarke was brought up by his grandfather, Dr Andrew Clarke, and two uncles, James Langton Clarke and William Hislop Clarke at the family home, Belmont, near Lifford. He went to Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and spent part of his early military career in Fermoy Co Cork.

Belmont was a large country house at Curraghlane in Lifford. The house has since been demolished, and a housing estate named Beechwood is on the grounds of the house.

Peter Benson Maxwell (1817-1893), the chief justice of the Straits Settlements in 1867-1871, was the fourth son of the Revd Peter Benson Maxwell (1780-1867) of Birdstown, Co Donegal, and was educated at Trinity College Dublin. His wife, Frances Dorothea Synge (1813-1896), was a daughter of Francis Synge (1761-1831) of Glanmore Castle, Ashford, Co Wicklow, MP for Swords. Their son, Sir William Edward Maxwell (1846-1897), was Acting Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1893-1894.

So there is much more to explore in these Irish links the next time I am in Singapore.


A walking tour of Robinson Road, Singapore

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 155, Tuesday 14 October 2025

Washing hands or giving alms? … a classical-style statue of Hygeia (Ὑγίεια) outside Vergina restaurant in Platanias, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

He ‘was amazed to see that he did not first wash before dinner’ (Luke 11: 38) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 37-41 (NRSVA):

37 While he was speaking, a Pharisee invited him to dine with him; so he went in and took his place at the table. 38 The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 39 Then the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41 So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.’

A Hamsa hand is part of Jewish tradition … a restaurant in Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Between yesterday’s and today’s Gospel reading, we have skipped over a short passage about various aspects of light. In short, we are to be full of light, not like the kind of people Christ describes in today’s reading.

Jesus has been invited to dinner by a Pharisee. He seems to go straight to the dinner table, and sits down – or, more correctly, reclines – at the table that has been prepared to eat. The unnamed Pharisee is quite shocked when Jesus does not first wash his hands before eating.

Of course, I wash my hands regularly – you might say almost religiously – before I sit down to eat. But here we are not dealing with a question of hygiene, but of ritual washing. Jesus had omitted to perform a religious ritual that was expected of pious and religious Jews, although not actually part of the Mosaic Law. Originally the rule probably had a hygienic purpose. By giving it religious sanction, one made sure that it was carried out.

In ordinary day-to-day life, I imagine Jesus had no problem about this ritual, but it is likely that here he is deliberately making a point. It allows him to draw attention to what he sees as false religion. A person’s virtue is not to be judged by his performance or non-performance of an external rite.

As Jesus tells this man in a graphic way, some Pharisees appear to concentrate on making sure that the outside of the cup is clean while inside it is full of all kinds of depravity and corruption – like the judgmental thoughts in this man’s mind and the sinister plotting that some Pharisees were directing against Jesus. God is as much, if not much more, concerned about the inside as the outside.

Instead, Jesus says, ‘give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.’

When the inside is clean, there is no need to worry about the outside. Giving alms is a positive act of kindness to another, an act of love and compassion. It neutralises the greed and rapacity of which he accuses them. It is not, like washing my hands, a purely empty ritual which says little and is almost totally self-directed.

It is so easy to judge people by their observance or failure to observe certain Christian customs, which are inherently and logically of moral nature. In other places in the Gospels, Jesus tells us not to judge because it is very difficult to know what is going on in another person’s mind. What he really emphasises here is the inner spirit and motivation. Once I get that is right, everything else seems to fall into place.

I once came across q piece of doggerel inside a church porch in Ardmore, Co Waterford:

I was shocked, confused bewildered
as I entered heaven’s door,
not by the beauty of it all,
nor the lights or its décor.

But it was the folks in Heaven
who made me sputter and gasp –
the thieves, the liars, the sinners,
the alcoholics and the trash.

There stood the kid from sixth class
who swiped my lunch box twice.
Next to him was my old neighbour
who never said something nice.

Bob, who I always thought
would rot away in hell,
was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
looking oh so well.

I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
I would love to hear your take.
How come these sinners get up here?
God must have made a mistake.

‘And why is everyone so quiet,
so sombre – give me a clue?’
‘Hush child,’ he said ‘they’re all in shock.
They weren’t expecting you.’

If I saw myself the way others see me, I would be less reluctant to open my mouth so often.

But the Church is full of people who continue to judge others – even other members of the Church – and justify their judgmentalism with passages of Scripture they quote out of context, sometimes even claiming passages of Scripture that simply do not exist.

And it’s not just about washing hands and pots and pans. If it was only that, it might be funny.

There are people who condemn people for their sexuality, they look down on people because of who they fall in love with or marry, they even claim to uphold Biblical standards of marriage.

But David offered no Biblical standards of marriage, while Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines – hardly a Biblical standard of marriage.

I find it quite shocking, yet it seems inevitable, that many people in the Church use arguments about sexuality, bolstered with phrases such as ‘Biblical standards of marriage,’ to express prejudices about sexuality. Some even remain opposed to women being ordained priests and bishops. These distortions inform and underpin many of the negative responses, particularly among people and groups that call themselves ‘conservative evangelicals’, to the appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the Church, there can be no discrimination against people in ministry based on gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity or language, for God knows no such discrimination.

I too easily become a hypocrite when I use the words or behaviour of others to condemn them, without having the courage to say exactly where I stand.

Father Tikhon (Murtazov), who died some years ago [9 June 2018], was a much-loved Russian spiritual guide. A nun, Sister Olga (Schemanun) of Snetogorsk Monastery, recalled how he welcomed everyone who came to visit him and who asked for his guidance and prayers.

Amazed at his kindness, she asked him one day: ‘Why don’t you refuse anyone? You bless whatever they ask of you.’

‘We’re in difficult times now,’ he said. ‘It’s better to sin by love than by strictness.’

We should worry as much about making careless wounding remarks as much as we would worry about preparing food unhygienically.

Can you imagine how much more positively people at large would view the churches if every parish and church put as much care into seeing that our children are not abused or infected with racism or discrimination or hate as much as we put into seeing we have sanitised our hands, are wearing colourful facemasks, seeing that the cups are clean for the tea and coffee after church on Sunday morning – or even as much as we attend to the cleanliness of the sacred vessels used for the Eucharist or Holy Communion?

‘So he went in and took his place at the table’ (Luke 11: 37) … an unexpected guest at a table in the old town in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 14 October 2025):

The theme this week (12 to 18 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Life Dedicated to Care’ (pp 46-47). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update on Sister Gillian Rose of the Bollobhpur Mission Hospital, Church of Bangladesh.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 14 October 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for all those suffering from illness, that they may find healing and comfort in your love.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious God,
you call us to fullness of life:
deliver us from unbelief
and banish our anxieties
with the liberating love of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

You ‘clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness’ (Luke 11: 39) … cups and dishes stacked inside a rectory dishwasher (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘Holy pandemonium’ and exuberant celebrations of the cycle of life and death at Simchat Torah

The Torah scrolls in Milton Keynes and District Reform Synagogue, including scroll No 970 (left) from Pacov in the Czech Republic (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The paired Jewish holidays of Shemini Hag’Atseret and Simchat Torah, which follow immediately after Sukkot being this evening. Shemini Hag’Atseret starts at sunset this evening (Monday 13 October), Simchat Torah starts at sunset tomorrow (Tuesday 14 October), and the celebrations end at nightfall the following evening (Wednesday 15 October).

The seven joyous days of Sukkot in the Jewish calendar are followed by these celebrations that mark the completion of one annual Torah reading cycle and the immediate beginning of the next Torah reading cycle.

Traditionally these are joyous milestones and they are marked with dancing with the Torah scrolls in seven circuits of the synagogue, known as hakafot, when the Torah scrolls are held aloft in procession. The celebrations include lighting candles each night, festive meals at both night and day and avoiding work. Among Reform Jews and in Israel, Simchat Torah is generally celebrated on the same day as Shemini Atzeret.

Sukkot, which finishes with these celebrations, is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Ingathering, and recalls the 40 years the fleeing slaves wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters. Sukkot is also regarded as a harvest festival, marking the end of the agricultural year.

The Jewish calendar and the western secular calendar are calculated in different ways. But every Jew celebrating Simchat Torah will remember that the surprise attack launched from Gaza by Hamas two years ago on the morning of 7 October 2023 coincided with Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah two years ago fell between sunset on 6 October and nightfall on 7 October. A day that was meant to be filled with joy, singing and dancing became the darkest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Simchat Torah means ‘Rejoicing with the Torah’ and is meant to be a joyous holiday that celebrates the Jewish love of Torah and study – a day of exuberant celebration of Torah and its centrality to Jewish life.

But that joy is tempered this year with memories of the horrors of events two years ago and mixed anxieties and hopes now this year about the ceasefire in the Middle East, the release of the last remaining hostages and the bodies of those who did not survive, and anxiety too about finding a just, lasting and sustainable peace in the Middle East and an end to the cycle of violence that has continued not just for decades, but for generations and for centuries.

The rabbis understood that time is both cyclical and linear. Cosmic time has a linear quality in which God acts to redeem people in History. Our life span is also linear, we are born and one day we will die. But, life continues around us, history continues to unfold, even when we are no longer a part of it.

Time, however, also exists cyclically. The seasons and religious festivals come round and are repeated year after year. Regardless of what happens on the historical stage to us or to those we know and love, these cycles will continue. The moon will continue to mark our days, weeks and months, the sun and the rains will nourish our crops, and the Torah will continue to inspire, instruct and comfort generations year after year.

Simchat Torah marks the end of one cycle of Torah readings and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah readings. The concluding section of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy (D’varim), is read, and immediately following that the opening section of Genesis (B’reishit) is read, representing this eternal cycle of living and our relationship with God.

To look at the Torah’s beginning immediately after its end presents an important perspective. By the end of veZot haBerakha (Deuteronomy 33: 1 to 34: 12), 613 commandments have been given and received, frameworks for every aspect of life have been outlined, and people have found themselves truly immersed in religious, moral and ethical issues.

But many people may find they have not made a connection between those issues and creation and the natural world. Reading about the prohibitions against charging interest and delaying payment to workers does not necessarily mesh in our with the creation of stars and planets. By the end of the cycle of readings, it may be easy to forget the beginning.

The reading on Simchat Torah is an opportunity to see Torah not simply as a book of diverse commandments, but as a unified framework for life that sees the earliest origins of the universe and our complex developments as humans as part of an entire system.

In its own subtle way, the reading of Simchat Torah highlights an important question: Do the scholars and adherents of the God’s law also genuinely see it embedded in God’s world? Indeed, can we properly study the laws and ideas of Torah without paying close attention to nature?

As one cycle of Torah reading ends with reading about the death of Moses, a new cycle begins immediately with reading about the days of Creation. Death and birth, ending and beginning, the cycle continues on for another year, and this is celebrated joyfully.

The highlight of Simchat Torah is the hakafot, held on both the eve and the morning of the festival, in which people process and dance with the Torah scrolls while circling round the synagogue seven times, singing and dancing but making sure that everyone who wants to is able to dance with a scroll. These celebrations are expected to be wholehearted and exuberant, and the effect is one that has been described as ‘holy pandemonium’.

It is a custom in many synagogues to invite specific members of the community who have been noteworthy for their contribution to community life in the past year to read the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Genesis. In many communities the remaining aliyot or calls to reading will be offered to as many people as possible, often needing the repetition of sections of the Creation story so that as many people as possible can take part. Simchat Torah is also the only time in the year when children are also called up to the Torah.

Despite the fragility we so often experience in life, Simchat Torah is a traditional celebration of the joy of living, of hope in which life continues. It celebrates our relationship with God, who looks to us to embrace all that life has to offer as we look to God to share it with us.

Torah crowns and mantles on the scrolls in the Aron haKodesh or Ark in Milton Keynes and District Reform Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 154, Monday 13 October 2025

The Church of the Sandals, a surviving Byzantine church in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship and Exciting Holiness remembers Saint Edward the Confessor (1022-1066), King of England. Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Church of the Sandals, a surviving Byzantine church in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 29-32:

29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! 32 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!’

The Last Supper depicted in a fresco in the refectory beneath the Church of the Sandals in Göreme in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

One Easter, when I was visiting the churches dating back to Patristic and Byzantine times in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia, one of the churches with an unusual name was the Church of the Sandals. It is an elaborate, well-preserved cave church, similar to the Dark Church and the Apple Church. This 11th century church has elaborate frescoes and is one of the finest cave churches in Cappadocia.

Historically it was called the Church of the Holy Cross and may have housed a relic of the True Cross. But the name Church of the Sandals comes from the footprints on the floor beneath a fresco the Ascension scene. According to legend, Christ left these sacred imprints at his Ascension.

The church is part of a monastic complex built into a shallow courtyard. Blind niches and red crosses decorate the two-story façade. The best-preserved refectory in Cappadocia is directly under the church. The seven-meter table has complete rock benches. The apse at the head of the table, which was the abbot’s seat, has a red-orange fresco of the Last Supper. The church above does not have an image of the Last Supper, because that image is found in the refectory.

Sandals and signs are part of the humour throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, a controversial 1979 film by the Monty Python team, including Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Scene 18, ‘The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem’, includes this dialogue:

FOLLOWERS: … Look! Ah! Oh! Oh!

ARTHUR: He has given us a sign!

FOLLOWER: Oh!

SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us … His shoe!

ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example.

SPIKE: What?

ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise.

EDDIE: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is …

YOUTH: No.

SHOE FOLLOWER: … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.

GIRL: Cast off …

SPIKE: Aye. What?

GIRL: … the shoes! Follow the Gourd!

SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together!

FRANK: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me!

ELSIE: Oh, get off!

YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!

SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe!

YOUTH: Get off!

GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!

FOLLOWER: The Gourd!

HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!

ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe!

HARRY: It's a sandal!

ARTHUR: No, it isn't!

GIRL: Cast it away!

ARTHUR: Put it on!

YOUTH: And clear off!

How often do we pray unusual signs as indications of God’s blessing, favour, approval or intervention, or even God’s judgment?

In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces this sort of request too. with that in his own day. People wanted some spectacular sign from him to establish beyond doubt that he was who he said he was.

In today’s reading, Jesus addresses the crowds who gather around him as a wicked generation because they are asking for a sign. Today people can be very impressed by visionaries who claim to have visions that are denied to the rest of believers.

The church has traditionally been very wary of all such claims. In the Gospel reading Jesus accuses his contemporaries of failing to see what is there before them. They want signs and yet all they need already stands in front of them in the person of Jesus, someone greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than all the prophets and kings.

If the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah and if the Queen of the South responded to Solomon, how much more should Jesus’ contemporaries respond to him?

God has already given us all we need in and through the church, in Word, in Sacrament and in the community of believers. There we find the living word of God. There we find the Eucharist and the other sacraments. There we find Jesus present among us and within his followers.

In the Eucharist, Christ is present to us in the bread and the wine, saying, ‘This is my body … This is my blood’.

In coming to Christ in the Eucharist, we are coming to one who is greater than Jonah or Solomon. He is present to us in other ways also. We take his presence seriously by responding to his call and following in his way, as the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s call. And, in response to Christ’s presence, we are called to respond to his presence by living in as a sign of his presence in the world.

‘Hold up the sandal, as he has commanded us!’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … large sandals as a sign at the Antika Irish bar in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 13 October 2025):

The theme this week (12 to 18 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Life Dedicated to Care’ (pp 46-47). This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update on Sister Gillian Rose of the Bollobhpur Mission Hospital, Church of Bangladesh.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 13 October 2025) invites us to pray:

Father God, thank you for the incredible ministry of Sister Gillian. Bless and protect her for your name’s sake.

The Collect:

Sovereign God,
who set your servant Edward
upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and inspired him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ
by word and deed,
that we may, with all your saints, inherit your eternal glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God our redeemer,
who inspired Edward to witness to your love
and to work for the coming of your kingdom:
may we, who in this sacrament share the bread of heaven,
be fired by your Spirit to proclaim the gospel in our daily living
and never to rest content until your kingdom come,
on earth as it is in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘The shoe is … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … trying sandals for size in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Katherine’s, a Greek Orthodox community in Friern Barnet and how it has found new life in an old church

Saint Katherine’s Church, the Greek Orthodox Church in Friern Barnet, is surrounded by a large wooded churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I spent a day recently visiting Saint Katherine’s Church, the Greek Orthodox Church in Friern Barnet, where the parish priest, Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou Introduced me to the church and the area around Friern Barnet, Finchley, Mill Hill and Golder’s Green. His parish has a large population of Greek Cypriots and Greek-speaking families.

Father Damian and I were introduced through a number of mutual friends, including the writer Richar Pine, a regular contributor to The Irish Times and founder of the Durrell School of Corfu, where I lectured in 2006, Euthymius Petrou in Athens and Father Gregory Wellington of the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford.

Over the day, our conversations ranged across a vast range of shared interests, from Sir Richard Church, Sir Charles Napier and the Irish Philhellenes and the folk music of Zakynthos to Epitaphios processions in Corfu, from the current crisis at Saint Katherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai and the plight of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, to Italian opera, the songs of Maria Farandouri and modern Greek poetry.

Inside Saint Katherine’s Church, facing towards the iconostasis, the altar and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church is picturesque country church in Friern Park that dates from 1853 and that was originally known as Saint James’s Church. The church stands on the corner of Friern Barnet Lane and Friary Road, on the main north-south road through the village. The church is surrounded by 20th century housing but retains its large wooded churchyard.

Friern Barnet was once a small, rural parish seven miles north of London. Its original name, Little Barnet, distinguished it from the larger part of Barnet that was in Hertfordshire.

The story of this church goes back 800 years to a time when there was a friary in the area serving pilgrims on their way to and from St Albans. The manor later called Friern Barnet or Whetstone seems to have been held by St Albans Abbey before the Conquest, but it was taken from that abbey by William I and apparently given to the Bishop of London.

Inside Saint Katherine’s Church, facing the west end from the iconostasis and the altar at the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A church was first mentioned in 1187, probably Saint James’s. By the late 12th century, the lands in Barnet were held by John Picot from the Bishop of London. By 1199, Bishop Gilbert Foliot or his successor Richard FitzNeal had given these lands to the Knights Hospitaller, following Picot’s surrender of them.

The name of Friern Barnet did not appear before 1294 and reflected the lordship of the Brotherhood of the Knights Hospitaller.

With the dissolution of the monastic houses and the Hospitallers in 1540 the manor of Friern Barnet passed to the Crown and then to Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

The 12th century Romanesque south doorway was restored and reset by the Habershon brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original Norman church was a simple one with of a nave and chancel with a south porch and a wooden west tower. The church today consists of a chancel with a north vestry, a nave with south aisle, a porch and a tower with a shingled spire at the south-west. The exterior is of flint, with stone dressings. The Friern Barnet Parishioners War Memorial stands in the churchyard.

Today’s church owes its appearance to a major restoration and enlargement in 1853 by the brothers William Habershon (1819-1892) and Edward Habershon (1826-1900). The Habershon brothers specialised in neo-gothic buildings, especially churches and chapels. They increased the seating capacity of the church from 200 to 500 and reset the 12th century Romanesque south doorway – although it is heavily restored, many of the original stones survive.

The 1853 tower collapsed in 1930 and was rebuilt on the same plan.

An octagonal parish room, the Jubilee Hall, was added on the north side of the nave in 1977, and it is reached through the church by the north nave doorway.

The Jubilee Hall, an octagonal parish room, was added on the north side of the church in 1977 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint John the Evangelist Church on Friern Barnet Lane was built in 1910 as a chapel-of-ease to Saint James’s, which was no longer large enough for the expanding population.

Saint James’s continued to serve the parish until 2009, when Church of England services for Friern Barnet were transferred to Saint John’s Church on Friern Barnet Road and Saint James’s was leased to the local Greek Orthodox community, who renamed it Saint Katherine’s Church.

Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Community was formally established in 1985, mainly through the efforts and energy of Katina Antoniou. Father Nicodemos Velalopoulos was the first priest, and services were held in a number of local Anglican churches until the parish found space in All Saints’ Church, Whetstone, in 1986.

A large and Greek and Greek Cypriot community have been based in Hendon since the 1960s, with a church and under the leadership of Bishop Aristarchos of Zenoupolis, and later served by Father Andrew Panayiotou from 1986.

An icon of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Saint Katherine’s Church, Friern Barnet (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Six years after the church was founded, it moved in 1992 to Saint Mark’s Church in New Barnet. Father Damian, the Very Revd Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou, was appointed priest-in-charge of the church 30 years ago in October 1995.

After studying journalism in Athens, he went to Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, and was ordained in Jerusalem, where he served for 11 years in the Patriarchate, and has been a chaplain in the Greek army.

He has also studied theology in Athens, Italian language and culture in Perugia, and teacher training in Nottingham, and he has an MA in Religion and Politics from Saint Mary’s University, London. He has served the Greek Orthodox community in Aylesbury, and was chaplain to the Mayor of Barnet, Pantelitsa Rutte, in 2011-2012. He has a particular interest in the Irish Philhellenes, with a yearning to correct the name of the street in Athens named after Sir Richard Church from Cork.

Saint Katherine’s found a new home at Saint James the Great Church, Friern Barnet, in 2009 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Although at first his church services in the new parish were few, there were several community events and significant visits by Archbishop Damianos of Sinai in June 1996 and the late Patriarch Petros of Alexandria in September 1997. The choir of Saint George Karytsis Church in Athens visited in 2000, and sang at the feast day of Saint Catherine and at a millennium concert.

A plan to build a new church in 2004 was never realised. However, Saint Katherine’s found a new home in 2009 at Saint James the Great Church at Friern Barnet Lane. The congregation soon tripled in number and the Jubilee Hall began to host many events.

The hall was upgraded, and work on the church included repairs to the masonry, landscaping, roof cleaning, maintenance of the bell tower and other improvements.

The flame passed outside the church as it was carried through London on 26 July 2012, when the road was bedecked with Greek flags. This was followed by an Olympic Concert in the church.

Father Gregory Wellington was ordained deacon for the church in 2011 and priest in January 2014. He was there as deacon in 2011-2014 and as assistant priest in 2014-2023.

The church had a major renovation at the end of 2016 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

During a major renovation of the church from September 2016, the church found alternative accommodation for three months in All Saints’ Church, Whetstone.

More recently, the church was renovated internally, new lighting was installed along with new electrical installations, flooring and painting, all signs of hope for and an investment in the future of Saint Katherine’s.

When I visited Saint Katherine’s last Tuesday, the south porch was decorated joyfully with flags from Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Romania, the UK and other countries, representing the cultural diversity found in this Orthodox community.

Matins and the Divine Liturgy are celebrated in Saint Katherine’s Church, Friern Barnet, from 9:30 am on Sundays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• The services at Saint Katherine’s Church include Matins and Divine Liturgy on Sundays (9:30 am to 12 noon), on weekdays (9:30 to 11:15 am) and Vespers (Summer 7 pm, Winter 6 pm), with other services according to the Church calendar.

With Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou (Father Damian) in Saint Katherine’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 153, Sunday 12 October 2025, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII)

As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him … they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ (Luke 17: 12-13)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and today is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025). Later this morning, I hope to take part in the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, reading one of the lessons.

The calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, as I was reminded at Vespers last night, today commemorates the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (nicaea II), the 365 bishops and priests at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 who condemned the iconoclast heresy and restored the veneration of icons in the Church. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

James Tissot (1836-1902), ‘The Healing of Ten Lepers’ (‘Guérison de dix lépreux’), 1886-1896, Brooklyn Museum

Luke 17: 11-19 (NRSVA):

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ 14 When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19 Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’

The ‘Leper’s Squint’ and the Arthur Memorial behind the organ in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 17: 11-19) provides many opportunities for many sermons on faith and healing, inclusion and exclusion, how Christ meets our every need, how we need conversion, on the connection between healing of the body and healing of the soul, perhaps even on the value of good manners and learning to say thank you.

Some parishes are going to hear about one Samaritan who returns and says thank you. Others may hear about nine other lepers who did exactly as they were told, went and showed themselves to the priests, received a clean bill of health and were restored to their rightful place in the community of faith.

But which is the greatest miracle for you: the healing of these 10 people?

Or their restoration to their rightful places in the community of faith?

Perhaps it is worth noting that it is the 10 men, not Christ, who keep their distance on the outskirts of the village, because they are forced to behave this way, to be marginalised and to live on the margins.

Christ keeps his distance, as might be expected. Yet, from that distance, he sees. Many Bibles have verse 14 to say that ‘he saw them.’ But the Greek says simply, καὶ ἰδὼν (kai idon), ‘and having seen,’ without any object, there is no ‘them.’

For Christ, we are not mere objects; and for Christ there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ He sees the future without the limits of the present.

This is a story about trusting in God’s plans for the future, rather than living in the past, living with the fears of the present, living without hope for the future … precisely the context for the urgings and exhortations to the exiles by the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7), precisely the hope the Apostle Paul has for Saint Timothy in the epistle reading (II Timothy 2: 8-15).

But we foil those plans, we quench those hopes, we continue to live in the past, when we continue to limit Christ’s saving powers with our own limitations, continue to look at him with our own limited vision.

Christ sees … sees it as it is in the present, and as it could be in the future.

Perhaps this is why Saint Luke has placed this story in a location that is an in-between place, the region between Galilee and Samaria. The place between Galilee and Samaria is neither one nor the other, neither this earthly existence nor what the future holds, but still on the way to Jerusalem.

Even the village here is not named.

We should not forget that not one but 10 were healed. Christ does good – even to those who will not be thankful.

And even then, we do not know why the other nine did not return to say thanks. It took an eight-day waiting process for a person with leprosy to be declared clean by the priests.

After those eight days, did they then go and give thanks to God in their local synagogues?

Did they first breathe sighs of relief and return to the families they loved but had been isolated from for so long?

Did they return to that unnamed village, and find that 10 days later Jesus had moved on … the next named place we find him in is Jericho (see Luke 19: 1-10, the Fourth Sunday before Advent, 3 November 2025)?

Surely Christ does good without expecting a thanks that comes straight from some Victorian book on good manners.

How often when we give a gift to someone do we want to control how they use it?

I give a Christmas present or a birthday gift, and then I am upset when they do not like it, when they trade it in for something else, or rewrap it and pass it on to someone else, or simply just never say thank you or acknowledge what I have done for them.

But who was the gift supposed to benefit: me as the giver, or you as the receiver? What was it a token of: my love for you, or my need for you to acknowledge how important I am to you?

A begrudging attitude to how others receive and use the gifts I give, or taking offence when I feel they have not thanked me enough, amount to a passive aggressive attitude on my part, a desire to control. If we give gifts only to be thanked, are we truly generous?

And if I only say thank you so I remain in someone else’s esteem, perhaps even to be rewarded again, to be kept on their invitation list, am I truly grateful?

Christ is not passively aggressive in this story. He is not seeking to control. He sends the 10 on their way … and they go. If he had expected them to return, he would not have been surprised that one returned; he would have waited around in that unnamed village until the other nine had time to make their humble ways back there to thank him.

Instead, it is more important what Christ frees them for, and where he frees them.

He frees them to regain their place in the community, in the social, economic and religious community that is their rightful place.

For the Samaritan, his ‘faith has made him well’: ἡπίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, or, more accurately, your faith has saved you, rescued you, restored you. The word σῴζω is all about being saved, rescued, restored, ransomed, and not just about regaining health and physical well-being.

That land between Samaria and Galilee is where we find Christ today. The in-between place, the nowhere land, the place where people need to be saved, ransomed, rescued, restored.

We all find ourselves in the in-between place, the nowhere land … to borrow a phrase from TS Eliot, wandering in the ‘Waste Land.’

Perhaps, just for one moment, it is possible to imagine that Christ has arrived in that particular in-between place for a reason. For the land between Samaria and Galilee is neither one place nor the other.

And that in-between place is a place where I might find myself unsure of who belongs and who does not, where I might be uncertain, untrusting, even frightened and afraid. It is a place where the usual rules may not apply, where I do not know my place, where I do not fit in, where I appear not as the person God see as the true me, but as others want to see me.

This is the place where Christ is travelling through in this Gospel story this morning. It seems to me that I am often travelling in that place every day, today.

It is difficult travelling in this in-between land. When we realise we are there, then it may be easier to identify with the 10 Lepers, cast out into the in-between land, not knowing where to go, rather than with those who appear certain about where they are going.

When we get to where you are going, we should remember how we feel about the present unknown, whether it is fear – ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ – whether it is trepidation, anticipation, or joy that is tinged with all of these, in this in-between time, this nowhere place.

Shakespeare reminds us, in the words of Portia in The Merchant of Venice,

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven … (The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1)

These 10 lepers were cut off from all they knew and loved, all the certainties they once enjoyed or took for granted.

And when we move from an in-between place and nowhere land, we should not hold back from the call to join the task of cleansing, healing, restoration. We do it not for ‘Thank Yous’ and plaudits. It is not about you, it is not all about me.

Indeed, it is not this one man’s thanks that is important, but that his thanks is expressed in turning around, conversion, and praising God, bowing down before Christ as his Master and as the Lord God.

Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer was the tenth leper turning back.

Christ invites us into that region between Samaria and Galilee, that space between wrong-doing and right-doing, between them and us – and bids us find our healing and salvation – and theirs. And in doing that we find ourselves engaged, quite naturally, in true worship. And in Christ we realise that there is no us and them – there is only us.

‘Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David – that is my gospel’ (II Timothy 2: 8) … the icon cross in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 12 October 2025, Trinity XVII):

The theme this week (12 to 18 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Life Dedicated to Care’ (pp 46-47). This theme is introduced today with a programme update on Sister Gillian Rose of the Bollobhpur Mission Hospital, Church of Bangladesh:

Sister Gillian Rose, now in her mid-80s, moved from England to Bangladesh in 1964 when the country was still known as East Pakistan. She has since devoted her life to serving at Bollobhpur Mission Hospital in Kushtia, western Bangladesh, and regularly writes letters to USPG to share updates.

In a recent letter, Sister Gillian describes the hospital as ‘a little oasis of peace,’ where staff live and work harmoniously together, regardless of religious or political background. In a country marked by political unrest, she finds joy in the sight of a diverse group of student nurses – Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists – living and working side by side.

Beyond providing medical care, the hospital offers spiritual support. Staff visit nearby villages three times a week, offering healthcare, prayers, and sacraments to those who wish to receive them. Sister Gillian concludes, ‘My faith is the basis of all I do, and faith is the foundation of the hospital’s work too. We are a Christian hospital, and we serve as a Christian witness in the community.’

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 12 October 2025, Trinity XVII) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Luke 17: 11-19.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious God,
you call us to fullness of life:
deliver us from unbelief
and banish our anxieties
with the liberating love of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Be joyful in God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; sing the glory of his praise’ (Psalm 66: 1) … at the mouth of the river in Messonghi in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Are we in danger of ignoring the 14 signs of the rise of fascism in the US and Britain?

Standing against fascism on the streets of London almost 90 years ago … the Battle of Cable Street on Sunday 4 October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The choice of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is particularly apt. It comes after a month of constant bombing by the Trump regime of fishing boats in Caribbean waters simply because they fly the flags of Venezuela and Colombia, without supporting evidence for the excuses given and in violation of international law.

I do not agree where María Corina Machado stands on many political issues, nor am comfortable with many of her social values and views. But deomcracy is not democracy if it is not also for those democrats I do not agree with. If you want regime change, then María Corina Machado shows how to do it peacefully, unlike the Trump regime.

Trump is huffing and puffing. He thinks he has brought peace to the Middle East, and, honestly, I truly hope that in some way he has. But if peace arrives, it has been long overdue.

I am reminded of the epigram by the Roman historian Tacitus in his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola: ‘They make a desert and call it peace’. It is part of a speech by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, in which he condemns the Roman invaders, saying they ‘ravage, slaughter, and usurp under false titles; and that ‘where they make a desert, they call it peace’ – ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant – and it remains a critique of imperialism and the nature of violent conquest.

We may have peace, of sorts, in Middle East, but the hostages have yet to return to their families, much of Gaza is still going to remain occupied, the people of Gaza have been given no hope for either democracy or housing, and Gaza has been turned into a desert that is going to remain without peace for decades, if not generations.

Perhaps the real reasons any agreement has been reached in recent days is because Nethanyahu overstepped the mark when his planes bombed Qatar and tried to take out the Hamas negotiators. Without Qatar has a broker, and without anyone in Hamas left to talk to, the Middle East faced the prospect of a catastrophe close to Armageddon-like proportions.

I am sure too that the coalition parties that have supported Nethanyahu fear the generational consequences of the criticism they face from the families of the hostages, and were warned that continued in havoc and devastation in Gaza have become a contributing factor – not matter how illogical and offensive that is – in the rise of antisemitism.

Trump’s demands for the Nobel Prize are petulant and, as if he couldn’t get any lower – debasing. This is the man who claims the wars he has ended include a war between ‘Aber-baijan’ and Albania, although there is no such place as ‘Aber-baijan’, and he may have been referring to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nor have Serbia and Kosovo or Egypt and Ethiopia recently gone to war, the border exhanges between Cambodia and Thailand never amounted to war and Malaysia was the mediator, the agreement between Rwanda and DRC signed in the White House, and both Pakistan and India, like Serbia and Kosovo, deny Trump every played a role in their negotiationss.

Trump’s promise was to end Russia’s war against Ukraine a key pledge in his re-election failed. The war continues relentlessly, nor has he ever renounced his desires to annex Greenland or even Canada. Meanwhile, war is being glorified and the Defence Department has been relabelled the War Department



Trump's obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize has taken internation attention away from the reality that rvery hour in every day brings yet another event in the White House or on the streets of towns and cities in the US that everone of us ought to find shocking. Here are 14 example of what has happened In the past week or two:

1, we have heard Trump in the White House admit he is taking away freedom of speech in defiance of court rulings;

2, government has been shut down and the Democrats are being blamed, even though the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House;

3, Trump has called for the arrest of the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois, local politicians are being arrested by ICE on the streets, at press conferences and in hospitals, without warrants and without IDs;

4, a Presbyterian pastor, the Revd David Black, was shot in the head in Chicago by ICE agents who then laughed to one another;

5, congressional electoral boundaries are being redrawn to fix the elections next year;

6, funding is being withdrawn capriciously from universities and academics are being denied permission to leave the US, in a parallel of the old Soviet way of denying exit visas;

7, racial profiling is now being used in making decksions about who to detain;

8, armed and masked men refuse to identify themselves as they lift people off the streets, family homes are being raided and families being broken up, and children don’t know where their parents are;

9, allies are traduced and betrayed, enemies are rewarded, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been humiliated while Putin has been feted;

10, people who are legally resident in the US are being deported to countries they never heard of and never lived in, or missing and unaccounted for, with no-one in charge being answerable or caring about these lost human lives;

11, troops have been deployed on the streets of Chicago, Washington DC, Portland and Memphis against the people they are supposed to defend and in defiance of locally elected state authorities;

12, pressure is put on television channels to sack comedians, journalists are being expelled from the White House press pool, and those who have tried to make Trump accountable legally in the past, including the former FBI director James Comey and the Attorney General of New York Letitia James, are being pursued through the courts with weaponised fraud charges;

13, the spectre of a non-existent organisation, Antifa, has been created and labelled ‘terrorist’ when there is no such organisation and the word simply means ‘anti-fascist’;

14, Pete Hesgeth has been shown to draw inspiration from and to plagiarise the speeches of Goebbels …

It is only a few years since any one of these events on any one day would have made headline news in newspapers and on major television news shows across the world. Had so many things happened in such a short span of time a few years ago in a small country in Central America or Latin America, there would have been sanctions or even a US-led invasion.

Have we become inured to what is happening in the US? We are no longer shocked or surprised. It is no longer headline news. And what comes out of MAGA mouths was parroted and mimicked by speaker after speaker at both the Reform and the Conservative party conferences in recent weeks.

If Robert Jenrick bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Robert Jenrick fuelled a fire of toxic nationalism after he doubled down durinhg the Conservative Party conference this week on his commments about not seeing another white face in Handsworth. He spent, on his own admission, all of 90 minutes in Handsworth, but thinks he’s so knowledgeable about the place to tell Tories in Aldrige-Brownhills that it is ‘absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ He claims it’s not the kind of Britain – or Britian if you’re eating Badenoch-branded chocolate – he wants to live in. To make what he said even worse, he said unashamedly, he ‘didn’t see another white face there.’

There are some points I tried to make on Facebook earlier this week in response:

1, 90 minutes do not make someone an expert analyst on any topic, particularly if most of those 90 minutes are spent looking down at litter on the street or looking into a camera, rather than looking people in the face, or, even better talking to them.

2, Jenrick seems to want to talk to white people only. He did not talk to or listen to anyone who was not white. What sort of human being denies the dignity and shared humanity of another person because of their ethnicity or culture? There is only one word to answer that.

3, Jenrick thinks Handsworth is ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ Obviously, he does not know what a true slum is like, he has never visited a real slum. But then, if he had, he could not be so slick about the words he spouts out in his rush to judgment. Indeed, if he had ever visited some of the slums I know, and had a conscience, he would abandon his political and social opinions.

4, And Jenrick came with prejudice in the sense of pre-judging what to expect: if he bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful. Rushing to judgment without looking around you, without listening to people, without talking to them, and without respecting their lifestyle and integrity is contributing to shaping a Britain than none of us should want to emerge in the future.

Jenrick has described himself as an ‘Anglofuturist’. But Hope Not Hate, the anti-racist think-tank, has shown how Anglofuturist accounts on social media are full of AI-generated images moon bases emblazoned with the Union Jack, giant spaceships hovering over Westminster, and Maglev trains zooming through green and pleasant countryside.

Beneath the surface, however, some of the most prominent advocates in the Anglofuturist movement are deeply racist. The Hope Not Hare analysis of Anglofuturism raises awkward questions for Jenrick – who hopes soon to lead the Conservative Party – and the movement as a whole.

MAGA ideas have infected British politics. We can expected them to inspire Reform and their far-right partners painting flags on roundabouts, protesting outside hotels that house huddled and frightened asylum seekers, and waving their flags through the streets of London. But it is sad indeed how they have also become acceptable within one of the mainstream political parties. One Nation Tories are now very thin on the ground indeed, and figures such as Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), Dominic Grieve and Andy Street seem to have become lone voices in their own party.

Standing against fascism … part of the mural at Saint George’s Town Hall commemorating the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said this week, ‘No one should be surprised that Donald Trump is employing fascist tactics – prosecuting his opponents, weaponising the federal government and attacking the very fabric of our democracy.’

Writing in the Guardian today, the former Prime Minister Gordon Browne says the rise of Reform UK has parallels with the rise of the hard right in 'in every one of Europe's major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, and the examples he cites from across Europe include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

But if democrats -- left, right and centre -- are going to unite to defeat the rise of this new fascism, it is important to ask: what is Fascism, and what is Anti-Fascism?

In a paper ‘Fascism Anyone?’ in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry, Lawrence Britt outlines 14 characteristics of fascism.

Britt studied the fascist regimes in many places in the 20th century, including Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Suharto in Indonesia, the colonels in Greece and Pinochet in Chile. He found they had 14 elements in common, which he calls the identifying characteristics of fascism.

A similar list is based on his political novel June, 2004 about an authoritarian government in the US under a Republican administration. The book was published in 1998, while the list is found in an article published in 2003.

Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism are:

1, Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism

2, Disdain for the importance of human rights

3, Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause

4, The supremacy of the military/avid militarism

5, Rampant sexism

6, A controlled mass media

7, Obsession with national security

8, Religion and ruling elite tied together

9, Power of corporations protected

10, Power of labour suppressed or eliminated

11, Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts

12, Obsession with crime and punishment

13, Rampant cronyism and corruption

14, Fraudulent elections

The Italian philosopher and author, Umberto Eco (1932-2016), is best known in the English-speaking world for his popular novel The Name of the Rose (1980). He also wrote extensively on fascism. In his essay ‘Ur-Fascism’ or ‘Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt’ (Il fascismo Eterno, or Ur-Fascismo), first published in 1995, Eco provided an analysis of fascism and a definition of fascism, discussed the fundamental characteristics and traits of fascism, and out forward some principles by which we can recognise fascism today.

He too identified 14 characteristics of fascism:

1, The cult of tradition: ‘One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.’

2, The rejection of modernism: ‘The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.’

3, The cult of action for action’s sake: ‘Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.’

4, Disagreement is treason: ‘The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.’

5, Fear of difference.: ‘The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’

6, Appeal to a frustrated middle class: ‘One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.’

7, The obsession with a plot: ‘The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.’

8, The enemy is both strong and weak: ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’

9, Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy: ‘For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.’

10, Contempt for the weak: ‘Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.’

11, Everybody is educated to become a hero: ‘In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.’

12, Machismo and weaponry: ‘Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.’

13, Selective populism: ‘There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.’

14, Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: ‘All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’

I can identify most of the 14 traits on both lists in the behaviour of the Trump regime and some right-wing politcians in the UK.

How many can you identify in speeches at the Reform and Conservative party conferences?

Meanwhile, as Charlie Kirk is being transformed into the Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement, I can imagine that somewhere in an attic in America or in an hotel room in England, a young girl is hiding, writing a diary.