A sculpture in Gordon Square recalls the Indian princess who was a spy in Paris and was murdered in Dachau

Noor Inayat Khan’s sculpture by Karen Newman in Gordon Square, near her childhood home in Bloomsbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in Bloomsbury earlier this week, walking from Euston Station to Fitzrovia, Mayfair and Soho, I stopped in Gordon Square to see the bust commemorating the British-Indian agent Noor Inayat Khan, who worked in France during World War II and who was tortured and murdered by the Nazis in 1944, when she was only 30.

I had known of this sculpture before, but failed to find it the previous week when I was looking at the sculpture of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. Perhaps it is appropriate that the memorial to the special operations agent known as Madeleine is hidden away in the bushes, but I found her at lunchtime in the north-east corner of the gardens of Gordon Square.

The sculpture by Karen Newman was unveiled by Princess Anne in 2012 after a two-year campaign by Madeleine’s admirers to have the bust erected.

Noor was an Indian princess who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her work in France and for revealing nothing of use to her interrogators despite being tortured by the Gestapo for 10 months. She was murdered by the SS in Dachau concentration camp on 13 September 1944.

Noor Inayat Khan was also known as Nora Baker and as Madeleine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Madeleine was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the renowned ‘Tiger of Mysore’, who refused to submit to British rule and was killed in battle in 1799. Although she was born in Moscow, grew up in Bloomsbury, was a fluent French speaker and carried a British passport, she had no one particular national identity, but had a strong aversion to fascism.

Noor Khan grew up as a Sufi who believed in nonviolence and religious harmony, as an admirer of Indian independence leaders Nehru and Gandhi, and as a pacifist. Yet she joined Britain’s sabotage force, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and became the first female radio operator sent into France in 1943.

Noor Inayat Khan was born on 1 January 1914, in Moscow, the eldest of four children. Her father, Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda in India, and lived in Europe as a musician and a teacher of Sufism; her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum (born Ora Ray Baker), was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vilayat Khan later became head of the Sufi Order of the West, later the Sufi Order International, and now the Inayati Order.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the family left Russia and settled in Bloomsbury in London. The family moved to France in 1920, and lived in Suresnes near Paris.

Noor studied child psychology at the Sorbonne, and music at the Paris Conservatory. Her career as a writer began with publishing poetry and children’s stories in English. After Nazi Germany invaded France, the family fled back to Britain.

The memorial to the special operations agent known as Madeleine is hidden away in the bushes in the garden at Gordon Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in November 1940 and later was recruited to the Special Operations Executive. She was sent to Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory.

She was flown into Nazi-occupied France on 16/17 June 1943, with the instruction to ‘set Europe ablaze’. The assignment was seen as so dangerous that she arrived in Paris with a life expectancy of just six weeks.

Noor Khan was the last essential link with London after mass arrests by the Gestapo destroyed the SOE’s spy network in Paris. As her circuit collapsed, her commanders urged her to return to Britain, but she refused to abandon her French comrades without communications. For three months, she single-handedly ran a cell of agents across Paris, frequently changing her appearance and name until she was eventually captured.

She was betrayed to the Germans, arrested on 13 October 1943. After two attempts, she escaped on 25 November. She was taken to Germany on 27 November 1943 and was held in isolation for 10 months, shackled at her hands and feet. She was abruptly transferred to Dachau on 12 September 1944 and at dawn on the following morning she and three other women were executed by two SS men, one after another, by a shot through the back of the neck.

She was just 30. Her last word was reported as ‘Liberté.

Later, she was awarded the George Cross posthumously for exceptional bravery.

Noor Inayat Khan is the first woman of Asian background and the first Muslim woman with a stand-alone memorial in the UK (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Her sculpture in Gordon Square Gardens is on land owned by the University of London, close to the Bloomsbury house where Noor lived as a child in 1914 and where she returned while training for the SOE during World War II.

The inscription on the front of the plinth reads: ‘Noor Inayat Khan, 1914-1944, GC, MBE, Croix de Guerre. Unveiled by HRH The Princess Royal on 8 November 2012.’

The inscription on the right of the plinth says: ‘Noor Inayat Khan was an SOE agent infiltrated into occupied France. She was executed at Dachau Concentration Camp. Her last word was “Liberte”.’

On the left of the plinth, the inscription says: ‘Noor lived nearby and spent some quiet time in this garden.’

The back of the plinth explains: ‘The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret organisation set up by Winston Churchill to help resistance movements during WWII. Installed by the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust. Sculptor Karen Newman.’

Noor Khan’s childhood home at No 4 Taviton Street, near Gordon Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Noor Khan’s childhood home in Bloomsbury was at No 4 Taviton Street, near Gordon Square, and she returned there while she was training for the SOE. A blue plaque at 4 Taviton Street, was unveiled by English Heritage five years ago, on 28 August 2020.

Madeleine’s memorial in Gordon Square is all but hidden, tucked away inside the railings in the shady the north-east corner of the gardens, partly hidden by foliage. Somehow, this seemed appropriate to me on a sunny mid-week afternoon as she spent her last months working from the shadows.

This is the first stand-alone memorial to a woman of Asian background anywhere in the UK. It has been described as ‘one of the few anywhere in the world to a Muslim woman.’ It is a reminder of her values of nonviolence and harmony and the personal cost of making heroic sacrifices in the face of the evils of oppression and fascism. It is also a reminder of the contributions immigrants and refugees make to life and liberty in Britain and a challenge to the Islamophobic stereotyping of Muslims and Muslim women in Britain.

Her story is told by Shrabani Basu in her biography Spy Princess (2006) and by Arthur Magida in Code Name Madeleine: A Sufi Spy in Nazi-Occupied Paris (2020).

A blue plaque at Noor Khan’s childhood home at 4 Taviton Street, Bloomsbury, was unveiled by English Heritage on 28 August 2020 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 41, Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi

The emblem of the Guild of Corpus Christi in Leicester, the Host and Chalice, seen in 15th century glass fragments in the Guildhall in Leicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time: this week began with Trinity Sunday (15 June 2025), and today is the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion or the Feast of Corpus Christi (19 June 2025).

Later this morning, I plan to attend the mid-week Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Calverton. But before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Christ present in the Eucharist … an icon in the central door of the iconostasis in the Church of Aghia Triada in Kalamitsi Alexandrou in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 51-58 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

The emblem of the Guild of Corpus Christi in Leicester, the Host and Chalice, seen in 15th century glass fragments in the Mayor’s Parlour in the Guildhall in Leicester (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

The Feast of Corpus Christi is marked in the calendar of many Anglican churches on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and is being celebrated in many English churches and cathedrals today. For example, there is a Solemn Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral at 5.30 this evening. Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, is celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with the Sung Eucharist at 7:30 pm, followed by a sherry and shortbread reception.

Traditionally, there has been a Corpus Christi procession in Cambridge each year, with the Sung Eucharist at St Bene’t’s Church at 7 p.m., then moving along Trumpington Street, passing Corpus Christi College, Fitzbillies and the Fitzwilliam Museum as it processes to Little Saint Mary’s for Benediction, followed by refreshments. The guest preacher this evening is Mother Alice Goodman, Rector of Fulbourn.

Pusey House in Oxford is celebrating Corpus Christi this week evening with High Mass at 6:30 pm with Procession and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The preacher is Bishop Norman Banks, sometime Bishop of Richborough.

At All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London, the Corpus Christi celebrations include High Mass at 6.30 pm, the Procession down Oxford Street and Benediction. The preacher is Father Grant Naylor, Vicar of Saint Matthew’s, Carver Street, Sheffield, who preached at the Corpus Christi Celebrations in Pusey House last year.

In Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg says Mass in a corner of the public gardens in Trebizond to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi. After Mass, he holds a procession round the gardens, chanting Ave Verum, stops, preaches a short sermon in English, and says that Corpus Christi is a great Christian festival and holy day, ‘always kept in the Church of England.’

The survival of Corpus Christi in the Anglican tradition is also illustrated in the history of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formally known as the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is the only Cambridge college founded by the townspeople of Cambridge: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Today, Corpus Christi is best known to visitors to Cambridge for its clock, the Chronophage or ‘Time Eater,’ which is accurate only once every five minutes. But the Old Court in Corpus is the oldest court in any Oxbridge college.

The new college acquired all the guild’s lands, ceremonies and revenues, including the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cambridge to Magdalene Bridge, during which the Eucharistic host was carried by a priest and several of the college’s treasures were carried by the Master and fellows, before returning to the college for an extravagant dinner.

The procession in Cambridge continued until the Reformation, but in 1535 William Sowode, who was Parker’s predecessor as Master (1523-1544), stopped this tradition. However, the college retains its pre-Reformation name and continues to have a grand dinner on the feast of Corpus Christi.

In the calendar of the Church of England, Corpus Christi is known as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi) and has the status of a Festival. But in many parts of the Roman Catholic Church, it has now been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. Yet, in the Roman Catholic Church, the feast of Corpus Christi is one of the five occasions in a year when a bishop must not to be away from his diocese unless for a grave and urgent reason.

Corpus Christi does not commemorate any one particular event in the life of Christ or in the history of the Church – but the same can be said too of Trinity Sunday (last Sunday, 15 June 2025) or the Feast of Christ the King (the Sunday before Advent). Instead, this day celebrates the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Corpus Christi first made an appearance in the Church Calendar at the suggestion of Saint Juliana of Liège, a 13th century Augustinian nun, when she suggested the feastday to her local bishop, Bishop Robert de Thorete of Liège and the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon.

The bishop introduced the feastday to the calendar of his diocese in 1246, and the archdeacon subsequently introduced it to the calendar of the Western Church when he became Pope Urban IV in 1264, when he issued a papal bull, Transiturus de hoc mundo.

A liturgy for the feast was composed by the great Dominican theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who also wrote the hymns Verbum Supernum Prodiens for Lauds and Pange Lingua for Vespers of Corpus Christi.

The last two verses of Pange Lingua are often sung as a separate Latin hymn, Tantum Ergo, while the last two verses of Verbum Supernum Prodiens are sometimes sung separately as O Salutaris Hostia.

This was the very first universal feast ever sanctioned by a Pope. Corpus Christi was retained in Lutheran calendars until about 1600, and continues to be celebrated in some Lutheran churches.

Anglicans generally and officially believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – is there any ‘presence’ that is not ‘real’? But the specifics of that belief range from transubstantiation, to something akin to a belief in a ‘pneumatic’ presence, from objective reality to pious silence.

Anglican teaching thinking about the Eucharist is best summarised in the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. – (Book of Common Prayer, 1662)

The classic Anglican aphorism with regard to this debate is found in a poem by John Donne that is often attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:

His was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
and what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.

This, in many ways, also reflects Orthodox theology, which does not use the term ‘transubstantiation’ to systematically describe how the Gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the Orthodox speak of the Eucharist as a ‘Sacred Mystery’ use only the word ‘change.’ That moment of transformation of change does not take place at one particular moment during the Liturgy, but is completed at the Epiclesis.

And that completion is affirmed by our ‘Amen’ at the distribution and reception.

But when we say ‘Amen’ to those words, ‘The Body of Christ,’ at the distribution we are also saying ‘Amen’ to the Church as the Body of Christ, as Corpus Christi: ‘He [Christ] is the head of the body, the church’ (Colossians 1: 18), ‘which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Ephesians 1: 23).

In the act of communion, the entire Church – past, present, and even future – is united in eternity. In Orthodox Eucharistic theology, although many separate Divine Liturgies may be celebrated, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all the world and throughout all time.

Corpus Christi is not just a celebration for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It is part of the shared pre-Reformation heritage of the Church, and long pre-dates Tridentine teachings on the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

It is a reminder too that the Eucharist is supposed to be a regular celebration for the Church, and not just once a month, once a quarter or once a year. As someone reminded me recently, if Christ had meant us to celebrate the Eucharist only on special occasions, he would have used cake and champagne at the last Supper. But he used ordinary everyday bread and table wine.

The Corpus Christi procession at Pusey House in Oxford last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi):

‘Crossing the Channel’ is the theme this week (15-21 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.

The USPG prayer diary today (Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi) invites us to pray:

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the gift of Holy Communion, a symbol of your love and sacrifice. May we be strengthened in faith, united in your body, and empowered to share your love with the world.

The Collect:

Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

All praise to you, our God and Father,
for you have fed us with the bread of heaven
and quenched our thirst from the true vine:
hear our prayer that, being grafted into Christ,
we may grow together in unity
and feast with him in his kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Posters on the street in Oxford for today’s Corpus Christi celebrations in Pusey House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

Corpus Christi is being celebrated in many cathedrals, churches and college chapels throughout the Church of England today

13 million blog readers: but what does 13 million mean for the disabled, for tourism or for deforestation?

Greece is more than 13 million hectares in size, with a total land area of 13.2 ha, and has a coastline of 13.6 million metres (13,676 km) … the coastline below the Fortezza in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This blog reached yet another new peak late last night (17 June 2025), totalling up 13 million hits since I first began blogging about 15 years ago, back in 2010.

Yet again, I find this is both a humbling statistic and a sobering figure that leaves me not with a sense of achievement but a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

After I began blogging, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. It climbed steadily to 2 million, June 2015; 3 million, October 2016; 4 million, November 2019; 5 million, March 2021; 6 million, July 2022; 7 million, 13 August 2023; 8 million, April 2024; and 9 million, October 2024.

But the rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal over the past few months, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025), 11 million a month later (12 February 2025), 11.5 million a month after that (10 March 2025), 12 million early last month (3 May 2025), 12.5 million a month later (6 June 2025) and 13 million shortly before midnight last night (17 June 2025).

Indeed, January 2025 was the first month this blog ever had 1 million hits in one single month – or even within a fortnight – with 1 million hits by mid-January, in the early hours of 14 January, and a total of 1,420,383 by the end of that month (31 January 2025).

In recent months, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in January 2025 alone, and the other five of those 12 busiest days were in this month (June 2025):

• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 64,077 (14 January 2025)
• 55,614 (17 June 2025)

• 55,344 (25 January 2025)
• 52,831 (27 January 2025)
• 48,819 (15 June 1015)
• 46,920 (7 June 2025)
• 46,420 (8 June 2025)
• 46,042 (14 June 2025)

This blog has already had about 3.6 million hits this year, almost 28 per cent of all hits ever, by 6 pm this evening (18 June 2025) it had almost 49,000 hits.

Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ But I have noticed that seven of these days were in the week before and after Trump’s inauguration, the others were in the days around his outrageous military prade in Washington DC on 14 June and that the overwhelming number of hits are not from Ireland, the UK and Greece, as I might expect, but from the US.

The bots at work in Washington must be trawling far and wide for anyone critical of the Trump regime, but I doubt my criticisms of Trump, Vance and Musk are going to make it easy to get a visa to visit the US over the next four years, should I ever want to under the present regime. I’d prefer to boos my ego and cnvince myself that my popularity is growing and that I have become a ‘must-read’ writer for so many people every day. But, sadly, I don’t think that’s so. And if a minor critic of the Trump regime outside the US such as me is being intimidated, imagine how many critics inside the US feel they are being intimidated and bullied into success.

About 13 million tourists visit Venice each year … gondolas waiting for tourists near Saint Mark’s Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

With this latest landmark figure of 13 million hits by today, over 1.4 million hits in January alone, and almost three quarters of a million hits during June so far, I once again find myself asking questions such as:

• What do 13 million people look like?
• Where do we find 13 million people?
• What does £13 million, €13 million or $13 million mean, or what would it buy?

13 million or more people in the UK are disabled, from dyspraxia to impaired vision to Tourette’s.

It is estimated that there are about 13 million undocumented migrants in the US.

Burundi has a population of over 13 million people, and cities with a population of about 13 million people include Rio de Janeiro, Tianjin and Kinshasa.

There are have been protests throughout southern Europe about the over-tourism. About 13 million tourists visit Venice each year, 13 million tourists visited Berlin and the island of Mallorca last year (2024), Cyprus is expecting 13 million tourists this year, and already 13 million tourists have visited Hanoi and Thailand this year. Twice that number of tourists, 26 million, are said to have visited Barcelona, last year.

Greece is more than 13 million hectares in size, with a total land area of 13.2 ha, and has a coastline of 13.6 million metres (13,676 km), the ninth longest coastine in the world.

Greenland is melting at a rate of 13 million litres per second. That’s the equivalent volume of water in five Olympic pools discharged each second into the ocean.

Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation.

The number of olive trees in Crete vary in estimates from 13 million up to 30 million. The export value of California olives and olive oil is $13 million.
Lichfield District Council spends £13 million a year on local services.

Jeff Bezsos and Lauren Sanchez plan to spend $13 million on their ‘scaled-back’ wedding in Venice, with ‘a nice small gathering of 200 people’.


Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation (Patrick Comerford)

Saifullah Abdullah Paracha from Pakistan was held without charge by the US in Guantanamo Bay for over 18 years before being released in 2022. He had interesting perspectives on $13 million when he wrote for Reprieve back in January 2020:

‘I was surprised to hear President Donald Trump complaining about the $13 million that the US spends per detainee each year, to detain us without charge at Guantánamo Bay. It is difficult to think what they spend it on. Certainly, it is not spent on us. They do not need $13 million to close my cell door on me or to send me out into a shingle compound to walk in circles for an hour. I have diabetes, arthritis, and get chest pains that are clear warnings of my mortality, but they certainly do not spend $13 million on my healthcare. I have had two heart attacks and I fear it will not be third time lucky.

‘They don’t spend the money on the guards either. I have tried to befriend many soldiers over the years, as I feel sorry for them. They are little better off than we are. They are told we are the worst of the worst terrorists in the world, and that they are being sent here to do the job for which they enlisted – to make America safe. When they get here, they discover a bunch of nobodies – an old Pakistani businessman like me, a Karachi taxi driver like Ahmed, or Abdul Latif who was meant to have been on a plane home at the end of the Obama Administration. Trump has sworn he will not transfer anyone. We are “no value” forever-detainees, marooned here on a presidential whim.

‘Is it any surprise that soldiers here reportedly suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at a rate twice as high as those on the battlefield? At least the latter are doing the job they signed up for. Here, the guards find that they are not fighting, or even serving, the country they thought was America. Instead, they are riddled with doubt as to the meaning of their lives. I don’t get any therapy here for the abuses and the losses I have suffered, but I do find myself doling out advice to soldiers in their teens or early twenties who are psychologically lost. The S.O.G. is the Sergeant of the Guard in our camp. They call me O.G., which I am told stands for “Old Granddad”. One guard even ended up calling me “Father.”

‘My lawyer asked me what I would rather spend my $13 million on. I tell him, forget the $13 million, and just give me a boarding pass for the plane back to my family.

‘If I am not allowed that, first I ask why the American people would want to waste their tax dollars. So far they have spent $6 billion on this prison that has made nobody more safe and severely damaged the USA’s reputation as a country founded on the rule of law. My best estimate is that this could have saved the lives of 100,000 Americans – if it had been spent on health care, rather than torture.

‘Yet when pressed and told I must spend it all, I do not find that hard. It is what I used to do when I was a wealthy businessman, and had money myself. I do feel a duty to thank those who have helped me over many years, so I would donate $1 million to Reprieve to continue their good work. The rest I would invest in Pakistan, to help people to love life rather than cast it away on “jihad”. I have calculated that for each $1.5 million, I could create a hospital within a sustainable community – 200 families with jobs on the premises, a school, a fruit orchard and a hive of honey bees. It may sound impossible for that kind of sum, but it is Pakistan, where money goes much further. Indeed, I have written up an entire business plan which I call the “Milk and Honey Project.”

‘Imagine – or help America’s leaders to imagine – how much goodwill this would buy. Remember, also, that this is just the money being wasted on keeping one old man locked up. There are more than twenty “no value” detainees like me held in this dreadful prison, at an annual cost to the US taxpayer of over $250 million. I must agree with the President: it is a “crazy” waste of money. A man who so often boasts about getting a good deal should recognise that it is about time he stopped throwing the money away.’

Saifullah Abdullah Paracha is reortedly back Pakistan; Donald Trump is disgracefully back in the White House.

The world has a population of 8.2 billion people, and 13 million people represent only 0.16% of all those people, a modest number I suppose.

One of the most warming figures personally in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach an average of 73-75 people each day in the past month. It is over three years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 510 to to 530 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all 13 million readers and viewers of this blog to date, and for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

Lichfield District Council spends £13 million a year on local services (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 40, Wednesday 18 June 2025

Classical masks on sale near the Acropolis in Athens … the word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word for an actor who masked or hid his face (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time and this week began with Trinity Sunday (15 June 2025), and tomorrow is the Feast of Corpus Christi (19 June 2025). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Bernard Mizeki (1896), Apostle of the MaShona, Martyr, 1896.

I spent much of yesterday in London, but there was an interesting dimension, with visits to five or six churches and chapels in Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Mayfair. I am planning to go to a coffee morning this morning to celebrate 50 years of the library in Stony Stratford. There is no choir rehearsal in Stony Stratford this evening as the choir begins its summer recess. But before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

A classical Greek mask in a museum in Naxos in Sicily … the word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word for an actor who masked or hid his face as he said someone else’s words (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 1 ‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

16 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’

A T-shirt on sale in the Plaka in Athens … we are challenged to bring together our words and deeds, our needs ‘to be’ and ‘to do’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading for the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18) continues our readings from the Sermon on the Mount, and today’s reading is familiar to many as the Gospel reading on Ash Wednesday.

So, this morning I am reflecting on the meaning of the word ‘hypocrite’ which is repeated three times in this passage (verses 2, 5, 16).

Sometimes our comfortable differences can trip us up in ways that surprise or even embarrass us.

A priest colleague who is not from these islands once told me how, within weeks, he came a cropper in a new parish. He comes from a society and a culture where people speak openly and directly. He regards this as a mark of efficiency and a sign of his honesty.

But this did not go down well at all in his new parish. When he told parishioners what he wanted to do, he thought he was being frank, honest and direct. But they immediately saw him as abrupt, abrasive and rude.

In his next parish, he knew he needed to be a little less direct and a lot more diplomatic.

We all know what diplomats mean when they say talks have been frank and honest: bruising encounters with no one behaving in what we might call a civilised manner, or behaving towards each other like Christians.

We respond instinctively as if we expect to be treated politely and that others expect us to treat them politely too.

I offer two examples of how I think Ireland and England are unique in this respect. In other countries, when people pay for a service, they feel that they are doing someone a favour, giving them their custom and their money, and so walk away when the transaction is complete. It is a bonus for them if the person at the till says as they leave, ‘Thank you.’

But here, on these islands, we respond differently: when we pay in a shop or café, or get off a bus or train, it is we, the paying customers, who say ‘Thank You!’

Or again: How often have I asked someone for information that I know or expect them to have – looking for directions on the street, or asking for information at an airport or a train station. And every now and then we meet someone who is curmudgeonly, who got out on the wrong side of the bed, or is just downright rude. And they answer brusquely, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘Look at the timetable.’

And what do I say in reply? I say, ‘Thank You!’

I am just too Anglo-Saxon with my manners for my own good at times. I put on a polite mask, and I put up.

And sometimes we confuse those good manners with the answer we expect to that perennial question, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’

Well, when we look at what Jesus does in so many Gospel readings, we may be shocked. English is a polite language, and translators add their own polite priorities and good manners to how they translate what Jesus says in the original and very direct Greek into palatable, modern English.

This morning, we hear what sounds like Jesus being very rude about some very religious people. He calls them hypocrites seeking the praise of others in public places (verses 2, 5), and accuses them of being tow-faced (verse 16) on false .

The word hypocrite comes from classical Greek drama. This word (ὑποκριτής, hypokrités) was used for an actor who on stage puts on a mask and speaks the words of someone else. The actor with the mask could have subtitles with a disclaimer: ‘These are not my words, I am only using the words of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes … or one of the other great playwrights.’

So, a hypocrite was an actor, a pretender, a dissembler, a hypocrite who puts on a mask and says something that represents someone else’s ideas, but that he does not necessarily believe himself.

But when Jesus says other religious leaders or teachers are hypocrites, he is challenging them to drop the mask and to own the words they speak and to own the reasons for their prayers and rituals.

I bought a T-shirt in the Plaka in Athens some years ago that said:

To do is to be – Socrates
To be is to do – Plato
Do be do be do – Sinatra

If what we pray or say does not match how be behave or what we do, if our words are not reflected in actions, then we are hypocrites, using the words of others but behaving in our own way.

We should beware whenever prayer and piety get in the way of true religion: loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself. Beware when our piety separates us from others, for then it also separates us from God.

‘When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’ (Matthew 6: 3) … a classical-style statue at Vergina restaurant in Platanias, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 18 June 2025):

‘Crossing the Channel’ is the theme this week (15-21 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.

The USPG prayer diary today (Wednesday 18 June 2025) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, give wisdom and compassion to political leaders and advocates. Please inspire a spirit of compassion so that harmful policies are changed.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
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:

Almighty and eternal God,
you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and live and reign in the perfect unity of love:
hold us firm in this faith,
that we may know you in all your ways
and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory,
who are three Persons yet one God,
now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Corpus Christi:

Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites’ (Matthew 6: 16) … empty tables at a restaurant in Panormos near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

Two windows in Pusey House remember an Irish-born architect and his son who died on the ‘RMS Leinster’

Pusey House, Oxford, was designed by the architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my two recent days in hospital in Oxford – the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Churchill Hospital – over the past two weeks or so, I have ended each day attending Evensong in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House.

Last Friday evening, I noticed two sets of two-light windows near the chapel that commemorate two architects, father and son, with intimate links with Pusey House and with strong Irish identities.

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), the architect of Pusey House, was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly. His only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.

The Irish-born architect Temple Lushington Moore was commissioned to design the chapel and college buildings at Pusey House in 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Pusey House on St Giles’, Oxford, is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and is celebrating its 140th anniversary throughout the academic year 2024-2025. It was founded in 1884 in memory of Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and, for 40 years, a leading figure in the Oxford Movement.

The first principal of Pusey House was Charles Gore (1853-1932) in 1884-1893. Gore edited Lux Mundi in 1889, delivered the Bampton Lectures in 1891, and founded the Community of the Resurrection at Pusey House in 1892. Later, he became Bishop of Worcester and the first Bishop of Birmingham, before returning to Oxford as Bishop of Oxford.

At first, Pusey House occupied two townhouses on the present site on St Giles’ from 1884 to 1912. In 1903, a Leeds solicitor, John Cudworth, left a bequest of £70,000 to Pusey House, which then had a growing ministry to the university. When Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was Principal (1909-1934), the Irish-born architect Temple Moore was commissioned in October 1911 to design new college and chapel buildings.

Two pairs of two-light windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorate Temple Lushington Moore and his only son Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’

His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England, particularly in the North. He is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.

He designed about 40 new churches, including the Anglican cathedral in Nairobi, restored older churches, and made alterations and additions to others, and designed fittings and furniture for many church interiors. He also designed and altered country houses, schools, vicarages, parish halls, a court house, and memorial and churchyard crosses.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Temple Lushington Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920) was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, on 7 June 1856, the son of an army officer, Major-General George Frederick Moore (1817-1884), and Charlotte Reilly (1827-1922), the youngest daughter of John Lushington Reilly, of Scarvagh House, Co Down, and Louisa Hancock Temple of Watertown, Co Westmeath. Charlotte Reilly was also related to Power Le Poer Trench (1770-1839), the last Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam, and to Archbishop William Alexander of Armagh.

So the names Temple and Lushington come from his mother’s side of the family, with ancestral roots in Co Down, Co Westmeath and Co Galway.

Moore grew up in Scotland, moved to London in 1875, and was articled to the architect George Gilbert Scott jr (1839-1897), known as ‘the Middle Scott’. Although Moore set up his own practice in 1878, he continued to work closely with Scott, helping to complete his works when Scott’s health deteriorated.

From the early 1880s he travelled widely studying buildings on the continent, chiefly in Germany, France and Belgium. He was particularly impressed by the great mediaeval brick churches of north Germany, echoes of which can be found in some of his own impressively austere designs.

Moore married Emma Storrs Wilton (1856-1938), the eldest daughter of the Revd Richard Wilton of Londesborough, in 1884.

Moore is known for his Gothic Revival churches built in 1890-1917. He also restored many churches and designed church fittings. The National Heritage List for England designates at least 34 of Moore’s new churches as listed buildings. Two of these, Saint Wilfrid’s Church, Harrogate, and All Saints, Stroud, are listed at Grade I, and at least 16 of the others are at Grade II*. His other works include the restoration of the Treasurer’s House and Saint William’s College, York.

Stuart Kinsella of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, has also identified at least two cathedral and two churches in Ireland, one of each in Co Armagh and Co Galway, where Moore designed repairs and improvements: Dumore, Church, Co Galway (1887), Acton Church, Poyntzpass, Co Armagh (1890-1891), the Bishop’s Chapel in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (1890-1891), and Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam (1894).

Moore was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1905, and his pupils included Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), son of George Gilbert Scott jr.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Moore designed a large Gothic building around a quadrangle for Pusey House. The centrepiece is the two vaulted chapels separated by a stone pulpitum, based on those found in ‘mediaeval Franciscan priories.’

Moore’s only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was articled to his father, worked with him on his designs for Pusey House, and was expected to continue the practice. The Chapel and part of the Library were complete by 1914, and most of the remaining portions of the building were finished in 1918.

But Richard Moore was killed in the closing days of World War I. He had enlisted as a private in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was a military passenger on the RMS Leinster when it was sunk by torpedoes in the Irish Sea on the morning of 10 October 1918. The Kingstown-Holyhead mailboat, was 16 miles out of Dublin that morning heading for Holyhead when it was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat 123.

The RMS Leinster was carrying 771 passengers and crew. They included a crew of 76, 22 postal sorters from Dublin working in the ship’s onboard postal sorting room, and 180 civilian passengers, men, women, and children. The greatest number of passengers on board, however, were service personnel. Many of them like Richard Moore were going on leave.

Richard Moore was just 27 and was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin. Officially, 501 people died in the sinking, making it both the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea and the highest ever casualty rate on an Irish owned ship. The dead are remembered at the RMS Leinster Memorial in Dun Laoghaire, and for many years by the Leinster Memorial Church at the Seamen’s Institute (1919-1923) on the corner of Eden Quay and Marlborough Street, Dublin, designed by WM Mitchell & Sons.

One of the inscriptions on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Richard Temple Moore, Royal Wilts Yeomanry, Drowned on SS Leinster Oct 10 1918 aged 27 years. Only son of Temple Moore, Architect, and his partner on this building.’

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore had lived his later life in Hampstead, in Downshire Hill and then at 46 Well Walk, where he died on 30 June 1920. He was buried in the churchyard at Saint John’s Church, Hampstead, which he had altered in 1912. His son-in-law Leslie Thomas Moore continued his practice and completed some of his commissions.

The second set of wording on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘ADMG and in memory of Temple Moore, Architect of this building. Died June 30 1920 aged 64.’

Temple Moore’s south range of the quadrangle at Pusey House remained unexecuted at the time of his death, and was only finished in 1925 to sympathetic designs by John Duke Coleridge (1879-1934).

The smaller Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was reordered between 1935 and 1939 by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960). Comper and Moore were both invested in medievalism and, more broadly, in the richness of architectural revivalism. Comper’s work in the chapel includes a gilded baldacchino surmounted by the Risen Christ and attendant angels, and the stained glass in the east window.

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The two two-ight windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore and his son Richard are by Henry Victor Milner (1866-1944), who painted windows and church furnishings for many of Moore’s churches.

Milner worked for Burlison and Grylls for some time, and his work with Moore in his churches from 1887 on seems to have been commissioned independently.

The architectural historian Harry Goodhart-Rendel once described Pusey House as the best specimen of Gothic design in the city of Oxford. Pusey House continues its work as the centre of Anglo-Catholicism in Oxford but, far from being an architectural showpiece, Pusey House Chapel remains a place of living worship, where the offices are chanted and the Mass is celebrated every day.

The former Leinster Memorial Church on Eden Quay in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 39, Tuesday 17 June 2025

‘For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good’ (Matthew 5: 54) … sunrise off the coast of Igoumenitsa in north-west Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time and this week began with Trinity Sunday (15 June 2025). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the Revd Samuel Barnett (1844-1913) and Henrietta Barnett (1851-1936), Social Reformers.

But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘He … sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (Matthew 5: 45) … reflections of rain in Saint Mark’s Square, Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 5: 43-48 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’

‘For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good’ (Matthew 5: 54) … sunrise in Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading for the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 5: 43-48) continues our readings from the Sermon on the Mount, and continues reading from a passage that has often been misused and misinterpreted.

I wonder how often this reading has been a crippling burden on new disciples as they seek to live out their Christian faith?

‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (verse 44) – now that’s a tough one for everyone. And what about: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (verse 48)? That’s seemingly impossible.

So, as I did yesterday, let me look at each of these challenges.

The phrase, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemy closer’, is often used in situations where someone seeks to convey that do not trust some of the people around them.

The word ‘enemy’ (verses 43-44) comes from the Latin word enim, meaning ‘against’. In English, it means someone who is against us or our interests. For example, an enemy might be a person who wants to harm us physically or emotionally.

The Greek word used here, ἐχθρός ( echthros) refers to some who is hated, under disfavour, inimical, hostile, an enemy or adversary. In the New Testament, it refers to enemies of various kinds, including personal adversaries, enemies of God, and even the devil as the ultimate enemy of humanity.

In classical literature, Aristotle and other Greek writers classified people encountered by characters in tragedy into φίλοι (philoi, friends and loved ones), ἐχθροὶ (echthroi, enemies), and medetoeroi, who are neither or neutral. The characters and their audience seek a positive outcome for the first group and the downfall of the second, as the third group watched on passively or offered commentary.

Can we seek the downfall of our enemies, yet want what is best for them in God’s eyes?

At the time of Christ, ‘love’ and ‘hate,’ were not understood in terms of internal emotional feelings, or attitudes. He is not asking us to romantically or unquestioningly love our enemies.

People then did not understand ‘love’ and ‘hate’ in Jungian or Freudian psychological terms. They were internal states that had immediate connotations of corresponding external expressions.

The word ἀγαπάω (agapao) conveys ideas about welcoming others, entertaining them, seeking their better good, to be happy for them, to be content with the blessings they have received. Μισέω (miséo) means to hate in the sense of detesting.

To love our enemies does not mean to have romantic feelings for them, or to consider marrying them. It means to be attached to them, to be devoted to them, to be loyal to them, to seek their better good, to hope that they are treated fairly and justly. And to do that truly, our outward behaviour towards them must reflect our inner feelings.

Perhaps it would be easier merely to like them rather than to hope for the best for them.

But as Christ points out, God treats God’s enemies – the evil and the unrighteous – in the same as God treats God’s friends – the good and the righteous. Should we not do the same?

We are living in a world where the US President deploys National Guard troops on the streets against his own people and thinks it better to indulge himself on his birthday in a vainglorious and vulgar display of military hardware rather than seeking justice, mercy and peace.

We live in a world where war is escalating hour by hour, as we have seen in the Middle East, and in Russia and Ukraine in recent days.

We are living in a world where refugees are dehmanised, where hostages are held as bargaining tools and where starvation is used as a weapon of war, where a Republican politician suggests it is a good idea to tar and feather the Governor of California only days before Democrat politicians are shot at home and on their doorsteps, where the Governor of Florida says it is legal for drivers to run over protesters with their cars.

Wanting for our enemies what is the best for them in God’s eyes does not mean not praying to be defended against their evil, still less not wanting their downfall.

As the Trinity-tide collect prays this week:

‘keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities’.

If we are kind only to those we are close to, are we not simply repeating what those we hate also do? Where is the merit in doing that?

To be children of God is to be perfect enough.

‘He … sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (Matthew 5: 45) … Saint Anne’s Church reflected in the rain on Dawson Street in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 17 June 2025):

‘Crossing the Channel’ is the theme this week (15-21 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.

The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 15 June 2025) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, give wisdom and compassion to political leaders and advocates. Please inspire a spirit of compassion so that harmful policies are changed.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
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:

Almighty and eternal God,
you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and live and reign in the perfect unity of love:
hold us firm in this faith,
that we may know you in all your ways
and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory,
who are three Persons yet one God,
now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5: 48) … liturgical items in a shop in Kalabaka at the foot the monasteries of Meteora in Thessaly, Greece (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

A Bloomsday conundrum: did my grandmother live next door to a brother of ‘old Mr Verschoyle’?

No 5 Ashdale Park, Terenure … the Comerford family were neighbours of the Verschoyle family for over 60 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today is being celebrated not only in Dublin but across the world as Bloomsday (16 June 2023), a major cultural festival even by people who have never read Ulysses. Bloomsday recalls the day in 1904 when Leopold Bloom wandered the streets of Dublin as a modern-day Odysseus and, after many adventures in his mind and in the city, found his way home on Bloomsday.

I have written often in the past about Bloomsday and links with the Comerford family, including Leopold Bloom’s birthplace on Clanbrassil Street and the neighbouring homes of family members, Molly Bloom’s reference in her soliloquy to a Comerford family party, the portraits by John Comerford linked with James Joyce’s family.

But there is another possible, though remote, link between the Comerford family and Ulysses and Bloomsday that have been brought to my attention recently by the biographer and historian Bairbre O Hogain. Her biography of the poet, dramatist and novelist, WM Letts (1882-1972), Sing in the Quiet Places of my Heart, was published last October (2024) by South Dublin Libraries.

For many decades, my widowed grandmother Bridget (Lynders) Comerfords and her children lived at No 5 Ashdale Park, Terenure. No 6 next door, at the end of the terrace, was known as ‘Derrybeg’ and was the home of Sydney Augustine Verschoyle (1883-1974) and his family: his wife Julia née Branigan (1880-1967), and his daughter, Clare Verschoyle (1910-2004). Clare’s mother Rose (McGarry), who was Sydney’s first wife, had died a year after Clare was born, and Sydney Verschoyle and Julia Branigan were married in 1914.

Sydney Verschoyle was born in Clontarf and had worked as a telephone electrician. He died on 4 November 1974, Julia had died on 20 August 1967, Clare died on 23 September 2004 at the age of 93, and they are buried in Goldenbridge Cemetery.

The Verschoyle family was descended from Dutch Huguenot brothers who had moved to Dublin on 16th or 17th century. Family members included a large number of Church of Ireland clergy, including a Bishop of Killala and a Bishop of Kilmore.

Bishop Hamilton Verschoyle of Kilmore was the grandfather of the novelist and playwright Moira Verschoyle (1903-1985), from Castletroy, Limerick, and Brian Goold-Verschoyle (1912-1942), a member of the Communist Party of Ireland who fought in the Spanish Civil War and who was one of the three Irish people killed during the Great Purge ordered by Stalin.

The family was also related to Countess Markievicz of the Irish Citizen Army. Dermot Bolger has told the stories of Countess Markievicz and the Goold-Verschoyle family in his book The Family of Paradise Pier.

The Bloomsday Festival on 11-16 June 2025 celebrates 121 years of Bloomsday

My grandmother’s neighbour, Sydney Verschoyle, is named as Sidney Verschoyle in Virginia Mason’s book on the Verschoyle families. James Joyce refers in Ulysses to ‘old Mr. Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs. Verschoyle with the turned-in eye’. Bairbre O Hogain suggests says that this ‘old Mr Verschoyle’ is Sydney’s brother Arthur, and that Arthur Verschoyle and his wife once lived near James Joyce.

The ‘Cyclops’ episode, which is known for its boisterous, patriotic, and often cynical tone. The narrator is mockingly listing different kinds of love, and the Verschoyles are among the examples. One is hard of hearing, the other is hard of sight, providing contrasting physical disabilities and emphasising the unusual pairing, with the overall effect of creating a sense of irony and humour. Joyce offers the Verschoyles as an example of how love can exist despite physical limitations and imperfections, and that it can be found even in the most unexpected places.

The passage highlights the pervasive theme of love in, even among seemingly unlikely or less-than-perfect couples. It is part of a larger passage about love and relationships, emphasising that ‘Love loves to love love’. This is what Joyce had to say about ‘old Mr Verschoyle’ in Ulysses:

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14 A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty Mac Dowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M.B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.

If Bairbre O Hogain and Virginia Mason are right in identifying ‘Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet’ with Arthur Verschoyle, then he may not have been all that old at the time of that first Bloomsday in 1904, and he was not yet married.

Arthur Verschoyle, the son of Charles and Sarah (White) Verschoyle, was born on 21 March 1881 at 88 Heytesbury Street, Dublin; Sydney Verschoyle was born Sidney Augustine Verschoyle, the son of Charles and Sarah (White) Verschoyle, on 6 August 1883 at Seaview Terrace, Clontarf. So Arthur was hardly ‘Old Mr Verschoyle’ at the age of 23 on that Bloomsday, Charles was only 21, and neither was married at the time of Leopold Bloom’s first odyssey.

On the other hand, Sydney and Arthur had their own insights into love and relationships. The brothers were married a day after each other in the same church: Arthur Verschoyle of Benburb Street married Mary Agnes Kelly of Aughrim Villas in Aughrim Street Church in Dublin on 29 April 1908; a day earlier, on 28 April 1908, Sydney Verschoyle and Rose McGarry married in Aughrim Street.

Perhaps ‘Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet’ was their father, Charles Verschoyle (1852-1827), who was originally from the South Circular Road area, near ‘Little Jerusalem’ with many residents who till come to life in Ulysses. Charles was a Sanitary Official with Dublin Corporation and the Superintendent of Dublin Corporation Artisans Dwelling, a large lodging house at 56 Benburb Street with over 100 male and female residents in one of the most deprived streets in Dublin.

They were certainly related to William Henry Foster Verschoyle (1860-1943), who was the father of two sons had were killed in World War I: Lieutenant Francis Stuart Verschoyle, was 19 when he was killed on 25 April 1915 in the Second Battles of Ypres, three days after the Germans launched the first ever poison gas attack; Captain (William) Arthur Verschoyle was 27 when he was killed in action at Arras in France on 11 April 1917 – his body was never recovered. They are named on the war memorials in Taney Church, Dundrum. Their mother is said to have died of a broken heart.

A third son, the Revd George John Foster Verschoyle (1889-1954), was the curate of Saint George’s, Dublin (1915-1925), a church that features prominently in Ulysses, and of Taney parish (1925-1930), and then Rector of Ardamine and Kiltennel, Co Wexford.

Their widowed father married the war poet, poet, dramatist, novelist and children’s writer, married the poet Winifred Letts (1882-1972) in Saint Stephen’s Church, Dublin, on 5 May 1926.

Meanwhile, my widowed grandmother, the next-door neighbour of Sydney Verschoyle and his family, continued to live at 5 Ashdale Park, Terenure, until she died there on 25 March 1948. She was buried with my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford, in Saint Catherine’s Churchyard, Portrane.

Her sons Robert and Patrick Comerford, her daughter Margaret and her step-daughter May continued to live at 5 Ashdale Park, which remained in the Comerford family until 1995.

I still need to do more research on Sydney Verschoyle of 6 Ashdale Park and the possible link between his bother Arthur and Ulysses.

Christ Church Meadows in Oxford … ‘The Spires of Oxford’ is one of the war poem by Winifred Letts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I thought about these two sets of Verschoyle brothers and of Winfred Letts and her war poems on my two recent odysseys in Oxford, and her poem ‘The Spires of Oxford’:

The Spires of Oxford

I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against the pearl-grey sky.
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.

The years go fast in Oxford,
The golden years and gay,
The hoary Colleges look down
On careless boys at play.
But when the bugles sounded war
They put their games away.

They left the peaceful river,
The cricket-field, the quad,
The shaven lawns of Oxford,
To seek a bloody sod—
They gave their merry youth away
For country and for God.

God rest you, happy gentlemen,
Who laid your good lives down,
Who took the khaki and the gun
Instead of cap and gown.
God bring you to a fairer place
Than even Oxford town.

<

i>‘God bring you to a fairer place / Than even Oxford town’ (WH Letts) … the Bridge of Sighs and the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)