34 million blog readers, and how the Mayor of Athens is responding to the arrival of 34 million tourists

A welcome sign at Athens International Airport … 34 million passengers passed through the airport in 2025 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me. These figures have passed the million mark four times this month, reaching the 34 million mark shortly before mid-day yesterday (29 April 2026), having reached the 33 million mark last Saturday (25 April 2026), 32 million at the beginning of last week (19 April 2026) and 31 million earlier this month (8 April 2026).

This blog had already passed the million figure in readership numbers five times last month, reaching the 30 million mark by 29 March, 29 million four days earlier (25 March), 28 million on 20 March, 27 million on 12 March, and 26 million at the beginning of that month (1 March). The number of hits yesterday was 509,644, the highest figure for one single day, and follows the recrods set on two days last month: 323,156 on 27 March 2026 and 318,307 on 1 March.

I have seen a phenomenal amount of traffic on this blog so far this year, and it continues to reach a volume of readers that I could never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (17 million) have been within little more than seven months, since 30 September 2025. The total hits in March 2026 were the highest monthly total ever (4,523,648), and the figures the following month were close to equalling that, with 4,365,464* hits by the end of April 2026.

At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 13.6 million hits or visitors in 2026.

I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), four were last month, three were in February, and two were in January 2025:

• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2024)*
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)

• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 280,802 (26 February 2026)
• 273,022 (27 February 2026)
• 270,983 (25 March 2026)

The number of readers continues to be overpowering and the daily averages have been about 145,000* or more hits a day this month. Ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.

‘We cannot become Barcelona’, the Mayor of Athens, Dr Haris Doukas, said last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

To put today’s figure of 34 million in context:

Last year alone, 34 million passengers passed through Athens International Airport, an all-time high and a 33% rise compared with the pre-COVID figures. Of that huge traffic, more than 8.7 million direct arrivals by foreign tourists were recorded in Athens.

But these figures mean Athens is facing a crisis in overtourism. With the number of annual visitors pushing out residents, the mayor has been prompted to seek hotel freezes and short-term rental limits. ‘We cannot become Barcelona’, the Mayor of Athens, Dr Haris Doukas, said last weekend. He believes the historic heart of the Greek capital is now at risk of ‘tourism suffocation’.

‘Athens cannot operate as if it were a giant hotel,’ the Mayor of Athens told Helena Smith of The Guardian. ‘Restrictions and rules are needed. Cities must also have a say in the way they develop.’ He warns of the reality on the ground: with 700,000 residents facing nearly 8 million tourists, tourism development becomes unrestrained and simply pushes local residents out of their neighbourhoods.

Haris Doukas is stepping up his campaign and plans to use a bill on tourism-related land use to introduce a sweeping ban on new business activity in the historic centre and to set a cap on hotel beds.

‘We’ll be stopping all tourist investment in Plaka, which I am on a mission to save. There’s no more room. Not for short-term rental, not for serviced apartments, not for hotels, or any other tourism use. The area is oversaturated. We want to say ‘enough is enough’ in a bill that is enshrined in law.’

In neighbourhoods with views of the Acropolis, the number of overnight stays has doubled since 2018 and rental prices have soared for local residents. Even the head of Greece’s hoteliers’ association, Evgenios Vassilikos, has joined calls to impose quotas on building new hotels.

City officials and the tourism sector in Athens are repeating the same mantra: ‘Athens cannot become Barcelona.’ Barcelona hosted the 1992 Olympic Games; Athens hosted the Olympics in 2004, and is now watching as Barcelona’s residents struggle with the same problems. Doukas has drawn considerable encouragement from the Mayor of Barcelona Mayor, Jaume Collboni, who recently announced a drastic move of his own: a complete ban on short-term rentals starting in November 2028 and revoking licences for more than 10,000 tourist apartments.

Haris Doukas was a professor of energy and climate policy at the National Technical University of Athens, with an impressive track record of academic publications, before entering politics. He became the Mayor of Athens in 2024 after unexpectedly winning victory with the support of the main opposition Pasok party and the Athens Now party on a pledge ‘to green’ what is widely seen as Europe’s ‘hottest capital’.

His environmental agenda goes beyond restrictions on the holiday rental model. So far, he has planted 3,855 trees in the historic centre and has introduced sweeping measures such as demolishing buildings to create public spaces, parks and playgrounds. At the same time, all of Athens is currently being dug up to upgrades the city’s electricity, water and drainage systems, which are not suited to the large number of visitors.

The mayor’s campaign extends to the bars and restaurants popping up on city rooftops and offering views of the Acropolis, some operating without licenses and creating noise nuisances. At the same time, he wants to block building companies and property developers from building high-rises along the first line facing the Acropolis to protect the city’s historic skyline.

‘Athens is for its people,’ he says. ‘It is not only for those who simply want to exploit it.’

34 million square metres is 34,000 sq km, the approximate land area of Macedonia in Northern Greece, the largest and second most-populous geographic region in Greece, with a population of almost 2. 4 million people. The major urban centres include Thessaloniki, Katerini and Kavala, and Macedonia also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, under the shared jurisdiction of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Mozambique has a population of over 34 million, and 34 million people aged 16+ are in employment in the UK.

34 million minutes is about 64 years, 7 months, and 22 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 64½ years, from mid-1962, to reach today’s latest figure of 34 million.

I retired from active parish ministry more than four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my current series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 800-1,000 or more people each week.

This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 34 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.

The peaks of Mount Athos … Macedonia has a land area of 34,000 sq km or 34 million square metres (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* These figures were adjusted after midnight on 30 April 2026 to give the full figures for that day and for April 2026

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 26, Thursday 30 April 2026

Waiting at a table at Katostari, below the Fortezza in Rethymnon … how we respond to waiters is an interesting test of character (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 May 2026), and we have now passed the half-way point in the Season of Easter.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Pandita Mary Ramabai (1858-1922), Translator of the Scriptures. 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.

‘The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me’ (Psalm 41: 9; John 13: 18) … bread on the table in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 13: 16-20 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 16 ‘Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. 18 I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But it is to fulfil the scripture, “The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” 19 I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he. 20 Very truly, I tell you, whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.’

A signboard waiter at the Taverna Garden in Platanias near Rethymnon … ‘the test of a true gentleman is in how he treats waiters’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

I had an unhappy relationship with my father that was never resolved by the time he died. But I still have some good memories of him, including him teaching me to row on Lough Ramor in Virginia, Co Cavan, when I was in my teens, encouraging my interests in rugby and art, his childhood tales of ‘Little Jerusalem’, Rathmines and Portrane, or sharing his trade union activism and his memories of World War II.

He enjoyed dinners in his golf club in Rathfarnham, with the Cavalry Club in the officers’ mess in McKee Barracks, and his club on Saint Stephen’s Club. I was hardly ever with him on those evenings, but I remember him giving me solid advice: ‘The test of a true gentleman is in how he treats waiters.’

Ever since, the way people treat waiters and staff in restaurants has continued to be a way of telling me a lot about someone’s character. A man or woman who is rude to waiters or, conversely, patronises them, is probably best avoided.

Perhaps good manners in general are in decline. But I cannot count the number of times I have heard demanding and rude people in restaurants bawl, bellow, question why the couple who came in after them have served already, click their fingers at waiters, pretend to know something about wine only to send back what they ordered, change their minds and blame waiters for getting things wrong, or at the end of the evening quibble about small details on the bill and walk out without saying thank you or leaving an appropriate tip.

Waiters are not my friends, nor are they doing me a favour. But they do work that brings me joy and pleasure, they work hard, they have long hours, they are knowledgeable, fluent in more languages than I am, and often are underpaid for their long hours.

On the other hand, it brings me great pleasure when someone in a restaurant remembers me or my face when I go back, or, even more pleasantly, remembers my name.

Waiters are the messengers most of the time, from the tables to the kitchen staff and the kitchen staff to the tables, and sometimes between the kitchen staff and the proprietor. As I realise so often in Greece, waiters may be part of the family that owns a restaurant, and the same could be said too about the people in the kitchens.

Messengers are not ‘greater than the one who sent them’ – neither the table, the kitchen nor the proprietors. Nor, for that matter, are they lesser beings either. The one who receives them well receives those who send them well too. How they treat me tells me a lot about the kitchen and the proprietor. But how I treat them says a lot about what I think of people in general.

Saying thanks is never optional. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek ευχαριστία eukharistia), thanksgiving or gratitude, and grateful or pleasant ( ευχάριστος). The Eucharist (Εὐχαριστία) and Ευχαριστούμε (efcharistoúme), ‘Thank You’, are inseparable.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

‘Thank you, Ευχαριστουμε’ (Eucharistoume), in a restaurant in Agios Georgios, Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 30 April 2026):

Before my day begins, I am remebering in my prayers Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, who died yesterday. We differed on many issues when we are part of a teleivsion planel debate during my active CND days in the 1980s, but he was a thoughtful, considerate and kind debater, with a great intellect. We bumped into each other when I was visiting the House of Lords with a friend in 2012, but little did I know then that I was going to move to the Diocese of Oxford. We sat together at lunch at a USPG Bray Day event he spoke at in London in 2024. He was a fount of knwledge on TS Eliot and was a critical thinker and engaing writer. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 30 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Loving God, we pray too for The Most Revd Dr Azad Marshall, Moderator/President Bishop of the Church of Pakistan and Bishop of Raiwind and for all Bishops and members of other dioceses of the Church of Pakistan. Be their hope and strength, ever present by your Spirit.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Philip and Saint James:

Almighty Father,
whom truly to know is eternal life:
teach us to know your Son Jesus Christ
as the way, the truth, and the life;
that we may follow the steps
of your holy apostles Philip and James,
and walk steadfastly in the way that leads to your 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.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

An evening meal well-served at the Sunset Taverna 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

Remembering Wittgenstein’s links with Cambridge, Dublin and Co Wicklow 75 years after his death

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) … died 75 years ago on 29 April 1951

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, who died in Cambridge 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951.

Wittgenstein was a Viennese-born Cambridge philosopher who had been influenced at an early stage by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947 and worked primarily in the fields of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

During his lifetime, he published just one small, 75-page book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children’s dictionary. His major work, Philosophical Investigations, was not published until two years after his death, yet it has become an important modern classic.

Bertrand Russell said he was ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.’

A plaque at the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street, Dublin, recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a guest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889. A family tree shows his paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier, a Jewish land agent who lived with his wife Brendel Simon in Bad Laasphe in the Principality of Wittgenstein, Westphalia. Napoleon decreed in 1808 that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname. Moses Meier’s son, also Moses, became Moses Meier Wittgenstein.

His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein (1802-1878), took the middle name Christian to distance himself from his Jewish background. He married Franziska (Fanny) Figdor (1814-1890), who was also Jewish and a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who worked closely with Brahms. They both became Protestants before they married, and the couple began a successful wool trading business trading in Leipzig.

Their 11 children included the philosopher’s father, Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (1847-1913), who became an industrial tycoon. By the late 1880s, he had an effective monopoly on Austria’s steel cartel and was one of the richest men in Europe. The Wittgensteins became one of the wealthiest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, second only to the Rothschilds.

Karl Wittgenstein married Leopoldine ‘Poldie’ Maria Josefa Kalmus in 1873. Her father, Jakob Maximilian Kalmus (1814-1870) was a Bohemian Jew from Prague; her mother, Marie Stallner (1825-1921) was a German-speaking Catholic born in Sevnica in present-day Slovenia, and was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s only non-Jewish grandparent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born on 26 April 1889 in the ‘Wittgenstein Palace’ at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche in Vienna. He was one of nine children who were all baptised as Catholics and received formal Catholic teaching. Gustav Klimt painted Ludwig’s sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family’s many music rooms.

In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein said their grandfather's ‘strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity’ was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children.

While Ludwig Wittgenstein was at school at the Realschule, he decided he had lost his faith in God and became an atheist. But his religious faith and his relationship with Christianity and religion in general would change over time. He resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to ‘bend the knee,’ although he once said, ‘I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.

With age, his personal spirituality deepened, and he wrestled with language problems in religion. At a time when he was finding it difficult to work, he wrote in 1947, ‘I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God’s will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God’s will.’

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein asks, ‘Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.’ His close friend Norman Malcolm later wrote, ‘Wittgenstein’s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.’

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein visited his Irish friend, the psychiatrist Dr Maurice O’Connor (‘Con’) Drury (1907-1976) in Dublin in August 1947. They first met in the chapel Westcott House, Cambridge, when Drury had been an Anglican ordinand.

When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge he resigned his professorship, planning to move to Dublin. From December 1947 to April 1948, Wittgenstein lived at Kilpatrick House, the home of the Kingston family near Redcross, Co Wicklow, where he worked on one of his major treatises, Philosophical Investigations, now accepted as a classic of 20th century philosophy.

By April 1948, he had moved from Kilpatrick House to Dr Con Drury’s holiday home in the west of Ireland, Rosro Cottage in Renvyle, Co Galway, and stayed there until the following October. This is now the Killary Harbour Youth Hostel.

From Co Galway, Wittgenstein moved to Dublin and to Ross’s Hotel, now the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street. A plaque by steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin recalls how Wittgenstein liked to sit and write there in the late 1940s.

He remained in Dublin until June 1949. In all he spent 18 months in Ireland before returning to Cambridge.

Kilpatrick House near Redcross, Co Wicklow … Wittgenstein lived and wrote there from December 1947 to April 1948 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Back in Cambridge, Wittgenstein became very ill on the evening of 27 April 1951. When his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, ‘Good!’

Four of his former students arrived at his bedside – Ben Richards, the Limerick-born philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Con Drury, once an Anglican ordinand at Westcott House, Cambridge, and later a regular communicant at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Anscombe and Smythies were both Roman Catholics. At their request, the Dominican friar and philosopher, Father Conrad Pepler (1908-1993), also attended; he was the founding warden of the Dominican retreat centre at Spode House near Rugeley, Stafforshire, which I revisited in a posing last week (22 April 2026). Wittgenstein had asked for a ‘priest who was not a philosopher’ and had met Father Conrad several times before his death.

His friends were unsure at first what Wittgenstein would have wanted. But they remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, and so they did. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards, 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951, and was given a Catholic burial in Cambridge.

A plaque in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a fellow and professor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein’s influence reaches almost every discipline in the humanities and social sciences, and he has influenced many current Anglican theologians, including Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank.

On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism and was sympathetic to it. However, he did not consider himself a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism as a way of life rather than as a set of beliefs he personally held.

So, did Wittgenstein see himself as Jewish?

Wittgenstein wrote repeatedly about Jews and Judaism in the 1930s, and many biographical studies present that his writings about Jewishness as a way in which he thought about the kind of person he was and the nature of his philosophical work.

On the other hand, as David Stern points out, many philosophers regard Wittgenstein’s thoughts about Jews as relatively unimportant, and many studies of his philosophy do not even mention the topic.

Yet, some writers have referred to Wittgenstein as a ‘rabbinical thinker’ and a far-sighted critic of anti-Semitism.

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of three-quarters Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews. The 1935 Nuremberg laws in 1935 defined as Jewish someone with three or four Jewish grandparents.

In a diary entry shortly after the German-Austrian Anschluss, he described the prospect of holding a German Judenpass or Jewish identity papers as an ‘extraordinarily difficult situation’ and compared it to hot iron that would burn his pocket.

In his writings, Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a ‘reproductive’ as opposed to ‘productive’ thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity.

He wrote, ‘The saint is the only Jewish genius. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance).’

While Wittgenstein would later claim that ‘my thoughts are 100% Hebraic,’ as Professor Hans Sluga has argued, if so, ‘His was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in [Otto] Weinberger’s case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius.’

Wittgenstein once wrote, ‘Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, “To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.” That is what I would have liked to say about my work.’

In a letter to Bertrand Russell in 1912, he said Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God – both composers died in Vienna.

The plaque at the entrance to Kilpatrick House marking the 50th anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 25, Wednesday 29 April 2026

‘I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 46) … looking out into the village of Piskopiano in Crete from the Church of the Transfiguration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Teacher of the Faith. Today also marks the 75th anniversary of the death of the philsopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I hope to say more about that anniversary in a blog posting later today. Later this evening, I hope to take part choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. 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.

‘Whoever sees me sees him who sent me’ (John 12: 45) … the Ancient of Days depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 12: 44-50 (NRSVA):

44 Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.’

‘The Light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (John 12: 44-50), we come to the end of what is known as the ‘Book of Signs’ in Saint John’s Gospel (chapters 1 to 12). Through these seven signs, Christ clearly indicates who he is and what his mission is.

Today’s reading recapitulates all that Christ has said in the ‘Book of Signs’. We hear how Jesus ‘cried aloud’ and spoke. This gives extra emphasis to what he is proclaiming. It is once again a call to believe in Jesus where ‘believing in’ means much more than mere acceptance of the truth of his words. It implies too a personal commitment to Christ and to his mission.

To believe in Christ is also to believe in, to surrender oneself entirely to, the One who sent him, the Father. All through this Gospel, Jesus emphasises the inseparability of the Father and the Son.

The Father sends Christ as light into the world so that ‘whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 45-46).

One of the first images of Christ that I remember being show as a child by my grandmother in her house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, is Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’. It remains my favourite image of Christ and my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Saint Catherine of Siena, the Dominican doctor of the church remembered today, says, ‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.’ Addressing Chrit in The Dialogue of Saint Catherine, where she touches topics on prayer, divine providence, and obedience, she writes, ‘You are the Fire that takes away the cold, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know the truth’.

The ‘word’ of Christ is a challenge. It offers a way of living and of inter-relating with God, with others and with ourselves. Christ tells us that his Father’s commands – which he also observes – mean eternal life. Everything that Jesus did was the carrying out of his Father’s will. We are called to follow the same path, which is the way to total freedom.

But how do we follow that path, how do we walk that path?

During the week, I found myself re-reading the hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ by the English Roman Catholic theologian and one-time Dominican priest, Roger Ruston. He has been strongly influential in Christian CND and similar movements. He is best known for both his careful critique of the ‘deterrence’ theory and the reliance on nuclear weapons and for his work on human rights, including his book Human Rights and the Image of God (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2004), and the conference with that name organised that year by the Dominican Justice and Peace Commission at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Roger Ruston’s insights have a pressing relevance in today’s dismal global political realities. He has also written a number of hymns that are informed by his theological priorities. His hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ is based on Isaiah 58: 5-9 and expresses the idea that love is better than fasting, and looks to ‘the dawn your light will break’ and that time when ‘the glory of the Lord will shine’:

Attend and keep this happy fast
I preach to you this day.
Is this the fast that pleases me,
that takes your joy away?
Do I delight in sorrow’s dress,
says God, who reigns above,
the hanging head, the dismal look,
will they attract my love?

But is this not the fast I choose,
that shares the heavy load;
that seeks to bring the poor man in
who’s weary of the road;
that gives the hungry bread to eat,
to strangers gives a home;
that does not let you hide your face
from your own flesh and bone?

Then like the dawn your light will break,
to life you will be raised.
And all will praise the Lord for you;
be happy in your days.
The glory of the Lord will shine,
and in your steps his grace.
And when you call he’ll answer you;
He will not hide his face.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Rembering Mika Chrysaki who gave her name to Mika Villas in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 29 April 2026):

I have been recalling my own grandmother in my reflections this morning. In my prayers, I am also remebering a family of dear friends in Crete who are burying a dear mother, mother-in-law and grandmother, in Iraklion this afternoon. Mika was a warm, welcoming member of the family, and her son proudly gave her name to the family hotel in Piskopiano in the hills above Hersonissos. I have stayed in or visited there countless times since the mid-1990s.

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 29 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Church of Pakistan as they seek to serve all neighbours. Particularly after the devastation of the floods, may their acts of care demonstrate Christ’s love in action even across faiths.

The Collect:

God of compassion,
who gave your servant Catherine of Siena
a wondrous love of the passion of Christ:
grant that your people may be united to him in his majesty
and rejoice for ever in the revelation of his glory;
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 of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Catherine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light’ … Saint Catherine of Siena seen in a window in Saint Giles Church, Cambridge (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

‘They have hanged my saintly Billy’ – how Wiiliam Palmer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’, went on a murder spree

William Palmer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’ or the ‘Prince of Poisoners’, depicted in the Illustrated Times

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been recalling two tales of murder involving residents of Rugeley, although when I looked deeper into both stories they were not substantiated by the records or by contemporary evidence.

Dorothy Chatwynd was said to have strangled her husband Sir Walter Smyth, three times her age, and to have been executed by being burned to death. Dorthy was an aunt of Thomas Chetwynd, who married Dorothy Coleman, a granddaughter of William Comberford of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth.

But when I looked into this story in greater depth, it turned out there is no primary evidence nor are there contemporary records of either the murder or of the supposed execution on Wolvey Heath in Warwickshire.

The second tale involves the sisters Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst, said to have been buried alive in the old churchyard in Rugeley on the capricious orders of Oliver Cromwell. But it takes only a little probing to realise how impossible this was: Cromwell died in 1658 and the sisters died in Rugeley almost 40 years later: Elizabeth in 1695 and Emma in 1696.

However, across the road from the ‘Old Chancel’ and the shared tomb of the two sisters Elizabeth and Emma, two headstones in Saint Augustine’s churchyard tell real stories of Victorian murders in Rugeley. One headstone, on the southside of the churchyard, is to Christina Collins, who was murdered on a canal boat near the church in 1839. Fresh flowers are still laid on her grave regularly.

The grave of Christina Collins, murdered on a canal boat in 1839 … fresh flowers are laid on her grave regularly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Nearby, under the yew trees at the west end of the church, is the grave of John Parsons Cook, murdered by Dr William Palmer (1824-1856). Undoubtedly Palmer had many other victims, but Cook’s murder was the only one for which he was convicted, and he was executed 170 years ago, in 1856.

Palmer is known as the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’ or the ‘Prince of Poisoners’. He poisoned his friend with strychnine, but he was also suspected of poisoning several other people, including his brother, his mother-in-law and four of his infant children – and there may have been many more. Charles Dickens called him ‘the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey’.

But why did he do it? Palmer made large sums of money from the deaths of his wife and brother by collecting on life insurance, he had defrauded his wealthy mother, and may have murdered his own children rather than bearing the expense of feeding and clothing them. And, it seems, it was all to feed an insatiable gambling addiction.

William Palmer was born at Church Croft House in Rugeley, between the canal and the ‘Old Chancel’ on 6 August 1824, the sixth of eight children of Joseph and Sarah Palmer. His father, a sawyer who made his fortunes in coalmining and collieries, died when William was 12, leaving his widow Sarah with a legacy of £70,000, the equivalent today of about £9.5 million.

At 17, Palmer was apprenticed to a chemist in Liverpool, but after three months he was dismissed amid allegations of theft and embezzlement. He was then taken on as a ‘walking pupil’ at Stafford Infirmary, went to London to study medicine at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, and received a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons. He returned to Rugeley at the age of 22 in August 1846, styling himself Dr Palmer and setting up practice as a local GP.

Palmer met a plumber and glazier George Abley at the Lamb and Flag public house in Little Haywood, near Wolseley Bridge and half-way between Rugeley and Stafford. There Palmer challenged Abley to a drinking contest; Abley was carried home and died in bed. Nothing was ever proved, but local people noted how Palmer showed an interest in Abley’s attractive wife.

A year later, Palmer married 20-year-old Ann Thornton, also known as Ann Brookes, in Saint Nicholas Church, Abbot’s Bromley, on 7 October 1847. Her mother, also called Ann Thornton, was the mistress of Colonel William Brookes, a former East India Company office who had lived in Stafford. After Brookes died by suicide in 1834, she had inherited a fortune of £8,000, worth about £1.35 million today.

The elder Anne Thornton had lent Palmer money, and she died on 18 January 1849, two weeks after she came to stay with him. An elderly Dr Bamford recorded a verdict of apoplexy while Palmer, for his part, was disappointed with the smaller-than-expected inheritance he and his wife gained from the death.

Palmer became interested in horse racing and borrowed money from Leonard Bladen. They had met at the races, Bladen lent him £600, and then he died at Palmer’s house on Anson Street on 10 May 1850. Bladen’s wife was surprised to find that he died with little money on him despite having recently won a large sum at the races, that his betting books were missing, and there was no evidence that he had ever lent money to Palmer. The death certificate said Palmer was ‘present at the death’ and the cause of death was an ‘injury of the hip joint, 5 or 6 months; abscess in the pelvis’.

Palmer’s first son, William Brookes Palmer (1848-1926), outlived his father. But his four other children all died in infancy, and the cause of death for each child was given as ‘convulsions’. At the time, no one seems to have suspected anything untoward about these deaths, but after Palmer's conviction many suggested he had poisoned them to avoid the cost of feeding them.

An image of William Palmer on a tourist notice board on Market Street in Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

By 1854, Palmer was heavily in debt and was forging his mother’s signature to pay off creditors. He took out life insurance on his wife, paying a premium of £750 for a policy of £13,000. She died soon after, on 29 September 1854, at 27.

Palmer was still heavily in debt, owing £12,500 and £10,400 to two creditors, who threatened to speak to his mother and expose his fraud. He then took out life insurance on his alcoholic brother Walter, paying a premium of £780 for a policy of £14,000, and then plied Walter with several bottles of gin and brandy a day until he died on 16 August 1855. The insurance company refused to pay out, sent two inspectors to investigate the policy and demanded a further inquiry into Walter’s death.

By then, Palmer was having an affair with his 18-year-old housemaid, Eliza Tharme. Nine months after Anne’s death she gave birth on 26 or 27 June 1855 to a son Alfred, only adding to the doctor’s financial burdens. Palmer’s life and debts were spiralling out of control and he set about plotting the murder of his friend John Parsons Cook, a sickly young man who had inherited a fortune of £12,000.

Palmer and Cook went to the races in Shrewsbury in November 1855, where they bet on a number of horses. Cook won £3,000 but Palmer lost heavily. The pair had a party to celebrate but Cook began to complain that his gin had burnt his throat, fell violently ill and told two friends: ‘I believe that damn Palmer has been dosing me.’ The two men returned to Rugeley on 15 November, and Cook booked a room at the Talbot Arms. A day earlier, Palmer received a letter from a creditor named Pratt, who threatened to visit his mother to demand repayments.

By then, five-month-old Alfred was unwell and he died of erysipelas, a bacterial infection, on 17 November 1855. That same day, Cook thought he had recovered from his illness, met Palmer again for a drink, but became sick yet again.

At this point Palmer assumed responsibility for Cook. Cook’s solicitor, Jeremiah Smith, sent over a bottle of gin, and when a chambermaid took a sip she became ill. Cook was given the rest of the gin, and his vomiting became worse. A day later, Palmer bought three grains of strychnine from a Dr Salt, put them in two pills and gave them to Cook along with two ammonia pills. Cook died in agony at about 1 am on 21 November, screaming that he was suffocating.

When Cook’s stepfather, William Stevens, arrived in Rugeley on 23 November, Palmer told him Cook had lost his betting books, that all bets were cancelled and that Cook had £4,000 in outstanding debts. When Stevens demanded an inquest, Palmer produced a death certificate from an 80-year-old Dr Bamford giving the cause of death as ‘apoplexy’.

The Talbot Arms on the left and Palmer’s house to the right … an image of Market Street, Rugeley, at the time of Palmer’s trialin 1856

At a post mortem in the Talbot Arms on 26 November, Palmer interfered and took away the stomach contents in a jar, supposedly for ‘safekeeping’. When a second post mortem was held three days later on 29 November, the local postmaster Samuel Cheshire intercepted letters to the coroner and gave them to Palmer, and was later jailed for interfering with the mail. Palmer wrote directly to the coroner, asking for a verdict of death due to natural causes and enclosing a £10 note.

The jury delivered a verdict on 15 December saying Cook had ‘died of poison wilfully administered to him by William Palmer’. Palmer was arrested for murder and forgery, was held in Stafford Gaol, and put on trial at the Old Bailey in London on the grounds that a fair jury could not be found in Staffordshire. When the bodies of Ann and Walter Palmer were exhumed and reexamined, Walter was too badly decomposed to make any new findings but antimony was found in all the organs in Ann’s body.

Palmer’s was defended by Sir William Shee (1804-1868). The chemist Dr Salt and another chemist, Charles Roberts, admitted selling Palmer strychnine, believing he was going to poison a dog, but both had failed to record the sales in their poisons books. At the trial, Palmer’s finances and debts were detailed, showing he had only £9 in the bank on 3 November 1855. A man desperately in need of money to avoid the debtors’ prison at all costs had murdered his friend for his money and tried to cover his tracks by sabotaging the post-mortem.

It is said 30,000 people gathered at Stafford Gaol on 14 June 1856 to see Palmer’s public hanging. As he stepped onto the gallows, he looked at the trapdoor and exclaimed, ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ He was not yet 32. He was buried beside the prison chapel in a grave filled with quicklime. After his execution, his mother is said to have cried out: ‘They have hanged my saintly Billy.’ Her words inspired the title of Robert Graves's final historical novel, They Hanged My Saintly Billy (1957).

The grave of John Parsons Cook in the churchyard of Saint Augustine’s Church, Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The only victim for whose murder Palmer was convicted, John Parsons Cook, was buried in Saint Augustine’s churchyard, close to the grave of Christina Collins, who was murdered on a canal boat in 1839, close to the house where Palmer was born and was living as a child, and across the street from the ‘Old Chancel’ and the tomb shared by Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst, with effigies depicting them in tied, linen shrouds.

The Vicar of Rugeley had so many people visiting the churchyard to see where Cook was buried that he paid for a gravestone with two lines of Scripture: ‘Enter not into the path of the wicked. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away’ (Proverbs 4: 14-15).

As for the Talbot Arms, where Palmer murdered Cook and where the sabotaged post-mortem had taken place, it took its name from the Talbot family, a local family of titled magnates who were descended from John Chetwynd, a first cousin of Dorothy Chetwynd, the alleged husband-killer.

John Chetwynd’s great-granddaughter, Catherine Chetwynd, who inherited Ingestre Hall and 10,500 acres in Staffordshire, married John Talbot (1710-1756) in 1748. The Talbot family owned coalmines, collieries and large tracts of land in Rugeley, Brereton and Cannock, and the Crown, a coaching inn on Market Street in Rugeley, was renamed the Talbot Arms.

It is part of the local lore in Rugeley that the name of the Talbot Arms was changed to the Shrewsbury Arms after Palmer’s hanging because of the embarrassing associations with Palmer’s murder of Cook and the subsequent inquest.

However, once again, this is probably another example of myth trumping history. The pub had been known as the Crown until 1810, when its name was changed to the Talbot Arms in honour of the grandson of Catherine Chetwynd and John Talbot, Charles Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot (1777-1849), 2nd Earl Talbot and later Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1817-1821).

In the next generation, his son Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868) was Conservative MP for Armagh (1831), Dublin (1831-1833) and South Staffordshire (1837-1849). He succeeded his father as the 3rd Earl Talbot and 3rd Viscount Ingestre on 10 January 1849. Then, on 19 August 1856, a mere two months after Palmer’s execution, Talbot succeeded a distant cousin in the Talbot family as the 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and 18th Earl of Waterford.

The line of succession was not clear or obvious, and there were other claimants to fend off, including distant Talbot Irish kinsmen in Co Wexford and in Malahide. The House of Lords eventually ruled in favour of the Rugeley claimant, and the Talbot Arms in Market Street celebrated the occasion, changing its name to the Shrewsbury Arms.

Today the pub boasts the more trendy but less classy name of ‘The Shrew’ … possibly in the hope that the name will tame any future potential imitators of William Palmer.

Palmer is less well-known than Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen (1862-1910) nor is he as notorious as Dr Harold Shipman (1946-2004). But he remains the most prolific murderer in Rugeley and part of local lore and history.

The Talbot Arms, where Palmer murdered Cook, later became the Shrewsbury Arms and is now called ‘The Shrew’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 24, Tuesday 28 April 2026

‘What my Father has given me is greater than all else … The Father and I are one’ (John 10: 29-30) … Christ the Pantocrator depicted in church domes in Rethymnon, Panormos and Iraklion in Crete (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Peter Chanel (1803-1841), a French missionary in the South Pacific and martyr. 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.

‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me’ (John 10: 27) … street art in Carlingford, Co Louth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 10: 22-30 (NRSVA):

22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ 25 Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.’

The Stoa of Attalos beneath the Acropolis in Athens … it gives an idea of what the Stoa or Portico of Solomon in Jerusalem looked (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

This week’s theme in the lectionary of the Good Shepherd in the ‘Good Shepherd Discourse’ (John 10: 1-42) continues in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today. We read verses 1-10 on Sunday, and verses 11-18 yesterday. Today we read verses 22-30.

Saint John’s Gospel focuses on major biblical festivals, such as Passover, Shavuot (which this year from 21 May 2026 until 23 May 2026) and Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles (this year from 25 September to 2 October ), and Jesus is seen to connect his mission with each of the these major festivals.

In Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus celebrates Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights in Jerusalem: At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon (John 10: 22-23, NRSVA).

Hanukkah is not one of the major Jewish festivals. It is not included in the Torah, nor is it referred to in the writings of the Prophets. It is a feast of dedication, remembering the Maccabees who recaptured the Temple from Antiochus Epiphanius after it had been captured and desecrated more than 150 years before Jesus was born (see I Maccabees 3-4; II Maccabees 8: 1 to 10: 18).

The Books of Maccabees describe the events over eight days that Hanukkah commemorates. The requirements for the rededication of the Temple seemed impossible, with only one day’s supply of oil for the temple menorah or lampstand remaining. According to these accounts, God miraculously allowed the oil to last the full eight days so that the dedication would be complete.

The name of Antiochus Epiphanes means ‘god manifest’. He was one of the successors of Alexander the Great and sought to unify his empire by establishing a single religion. Judaism and its practices, including Sabbath observance, scripture reading and the circumcision of eight-day-old boys, were outlawed, and the Temple was desecrated when a pig was sacrificed to Zeus there.

Under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, a nickname meaning ‘hammer’, the Jewish people fought a guerrilla-style war against the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes. Although greatly outnumbered, the Jewish rebels were victorious and retook the Temple. On the 25th day of the month Kislev 164 BCE, the defiled Temple was reconsecrated and sacrifices were offered to God.

The people joyfully celebrated the rededication of the Temple for eight days. At the conclusion of the festivities, it was decreed that a similar festival be held each year beginning on 25 Kislev (I Maccabees 4: 36-39).

Hanukkah was not one of the required pilgrimage festivals (see Exodus 23), but those who attended celebrated the days with great rejoicing.

According to Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem during Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights, a celebration of hope and justice against dark oppression and tyranny. The account in John 10: 22-42 concludes a festival cycle in John 5: 1 to 10: 42: Sabbath (John 5), Passover (John 6), Tabernacles (John 7: 1 to 10: 21), and Dedication (John 10: 22-42).

In other places, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world and should not be hidden away but to be like a lamp stand (or menorah), and to ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’ (Matthew 5: 14-16).

Hanukkah continues to be celebrated in Jewish homes and communities. Hanukkah and Christmas are not the same, nor are they equivalent. But, during both festivals, we are called to be lights in the midst of darkness.

With all the evil, division, oppression and injustice that is taking place in the world today, it is important for us too to be the lights of this world for all around us who desperately need light in their darkness.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

‘Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon’ (John 10: 23) … the Temple-like portico built by the Williamson brothers at Emo Court in Co Laois (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 28 April 2026):

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 28 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, as communities continue to to heal and rebuild, may our prayers spread like a vast tent over the nation, covering every person with your mercy, care, and enduring peace.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Jesus was walking in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon’ (John 10: 23) … the portico of the Duomo di Sant’Andrea in Amalfi (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

Two sisters in Rugeley who defied the law and were buried side-by-side in tied linen shrouds

The shared tomb of Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst in Rugeley shows the sisters in tied lined shrouds (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits in April sunshine to Rugeley, Brereton and Armitage, I heard stories of murder and alleged murder over the centuries in rural Staffordshire.

On Thursday evening (23 April 2026), I recalled one of those stories with tangential links to the Comberford family: Dorothy Chetwynd was said to have murdered her husband Sir Walter Smyth in Elford, and local lore says she was executed by being burnt at the stake on open land for dispatching of the husband who was three times her age.

Other stories of murder and alleged murder are told in the graves of two churchyards in Rugeley.

The tomb of Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst to the east of the ‘Old Chancel’ in Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

In the grounds of the Old Chancel to the east of the ruins of Saint Augustine’s Church, an old tomb dating back 230 years to the late 17th century is said to be the grave two ladies were put into sacks and buried alive inside the tomb on the capricious whim of Oliver Cromwell.

On top of the tomb, two carved effigies show two female figures, each tied at the top and bottom in a shroud. These curious effigies are behind a local legend that Cromwell had the sisters buried alive in sack – despite the fact that Cromwell died 40 years died earlier, in 1658.

The two sisters who share this unusual tomb are Elizabeth Cuting, who died in 1695, and Emma Hollinhurst, who died in 1696. At one end of the tomb is a skull and cross bones, a symbol that signified mortality and that is a common adornment on tombs of the time.

The skull and crossbones symbol in a panel at the west end of the tomb of Elizabeth Cuting and Emma Hollinhurst (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The true story of the tomb is connected to a 17th century act that required corpses to be buried in wool. These women were not alone in preferring to be buried in linen shrouds and in defying the legislation, as burial registers show. The two sisters Elizabeth and Emma decided to be buried in linen rather than wool, in defiance of the law. Such defiance would have resulted in a fine … but what judge or court was going to insist two dead women should pay such a penalty, or try to collect it?

Their images on the lid of the tomb of two women in their tied burial shrouds later gave rise to a popular local legend in Rugeley that the two sisters had been buried alive in sacks on the orders of Oliver Cromwell.

The churchyard has been cleared and the stones have been used to pave the site of the nave and north aisle of the Old Chancel. The remains of a late 14th-century penitential cross are still in place, and the tomb is still there too, and is now a Grade II listed monument.

In the churchyard across the street, at Saint Augustine’s Church, built in 1822-1823 to replace the older church now known as the Old Chancel, two graves tell the stories of real rather than legendary murders in the 19th century: the headstone of Christina Collins, murdered on a canal boat in 1839, and the grave of John Parsons Cook, Palmer’s victim., and the grave of John Cook, the friend and last victim of William Palmer, known as the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’ or the ‘Prince of Poisoners’.

But these are stories, perhaps, for another evening.

The sisters’ 17thx century tomb is one of the few surviving graves in the old churchyard and is a listed monument (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 23, Monday 27 April 2026

Christ as the Good Shepherd … a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Later this evening, I hope to take part in a meeting of the trustees of a local charity in Stony Stratford. 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.

The Good Shepherd … a stained glass window in Saint Mark’s Church, Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 10: 11-18 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading continues the Good Shepherd passage we were reading yesterday (John 10: 1-10).

In Saint John’s Gospel, there are seven I AM sayings in which Christ says who he is. The Dominican author and theologian, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, points out that that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection. We know of the six days of creation and how God rested on the seventh. In Saint John’s Gospel, we have seven signs and seven “I AM” sayings disclosing for us who Christ truly is.

The seven signs in Saint John’s Gospel are:

• Turning water into wine in Cana (John 2: 1-11);
• Healing with a word (John 4: 46-51);
• Healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5: 1-9);
• The feeding of 5,000 (John 6: 1-14);
• Walking on water (John 6: 16-21);
• The healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-7);
• The Raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11: 1-46).

The seven ‘I AM’ sayings In Saint John’s Gospel, disclosing for us who Christ truly is, are:

• I am the Bread of Life (John 6: 35, 41, 48-51);
• I am the Light of the World (John 8: 12, 9: 5);
• I am the Door of the Sheepfold (John 10: 7, 9);
• I am the Good Shepherd (John 10: 11, 14);
• I am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11: 25);
• I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14: 6);
• I am the True Vine (John 15:1, 5).

In the book of Revelation, we have the seven churches and the seven seals. And I could go on.

Today’s Gospel reading presents us with the best-known and best-loved ‘I AM’ sayings, which is repeated twice in this passage: ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (John 10: 11, 14).

This is such a popular image – one that has been with many of us since our Sunday School and childhood days. I think, perhaps, that the image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular images to fill stained-glass windows in our church buildings, surpassed in popularity only by windows showing the Crucifixion or the Last Supper.

But sometimes I have problems with our cosy, comfortable image of the Good Shepherd. Christ is so often portrayed in clean, spick-and-span, neatly tailored, nicely dry-cleaned, red and white robes, complete with a golden clasp to hold all those robes together.

And the lost sheep is a huggable, lovable, white fluffy Little Lamb, a little pet, no different from the Little Lamb that Mary had in the nursery rhyme and that followed her to school.

But shepherds and sheep, in real life, are not like that.

I remember once, on Achill Island, hearing about a shepherd who went down a rock-face looking for a lost sheep, and who lost his life. Local people were shocked – lambs don’t fetch a price in the mart that makes them worth losing your life for.

The sheep survived. But as you can imagine, in the process of being lost, it had been torn by brambles, had lost a lot of its wool, was bleeding and messy. Any shepherd going down after a lost sheep will get torn by brambles too, covered in sheep droppings, slip on the rocks, risk his life. And all for what?

And yet Christ says he is the Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep, in the face of great risks from wolves and from the terrain, and against all common wisdom, as the hired hands would know.

Christ, against all the prevailing wisdom, identifies with those who are lost, those who are socially on the margins, who are smelly and dirty, injured and broken, regarded by everyone else as worthless, as simply not worth the bother.

God sees us – all of us – in our human condition, with all our collective and individual faults and failings, and in Christ totally identifies with us.

Christ has already told those who are listening: ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved … and find pasture … the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have [spiritual] life, and have it abundantly’ (verse 9-10). Now when he speaks of himself as the good shepherd, the image is one that is familiar to those who hear him. True followers, he tells them, recognise the good shepherd.

Perhaps they are prompted to recall that David too had been a good shepherd (I Samuel 17: 34-35), but this was when he lived on the margins, and before he became king. Would they recall the many Old Testament promises that God would come to shepherd his people (Isaiah 40: 11; Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Ezekiel 34: 11)?

When Moses, Aaron and Miriam led the ex-slaves out of Egypt and into freedom, the people learned as they went to appreciate the value of a nomadic life.

They learned, first, that everything is a gift from God, symbolised by the manna, the first Bread of Life. And they learned, too, that worship need not be centred in one place. They came to value Tent over Temple and sheep over settled land. To be a shepherd was a noble occupation – a continuing theme in Jewish history.

Entering the Promised Land, these nomads found themselves surrounded by nations whose powerful elites ruled by subjugating the poor and weak. Yet this new community understood themselves to be completely differently. They were equal partners with each other. And they were equal partners because – as they learned in their wilderness – they were partners with God, the true owner of the land, with God who, as with the manna in the wilderness, called them to share in common all they had.

They had come to value equality and mutual respect. From the beginning, these ex-slaves understood themselves as one people, who lived in an equal partnership with each other and with God by holding fast to the values of the Exodus, when they shared the manna in the wilderness.

But by the time of Christ, however, all this had changed. With the development of a royal aristocracy and the adoption of Temple worship under King Solomon, nomadic values faded and social divisions appeared.

Social strife and class warfare appeared, and any understanding of the land as an equally shared resource belonging to God disappeared.

The kingdom then split into two nations, Israel and Judah, and Judaism split into rival branches. Some were centred on the Temple in Jerusalem, while Samaritan Judaism had its own rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Two kingdoms, two Temples, fear and hatred, injustice and inequality, were in sharp contrast to Christ’s message of radical inclusion, symbolised in Saint Luke’s image of the Good Samaritan and Saint John’s image of the Good Shepherd.

In Christ’s time, shepherds are the dispossessed, the lowest rung of society. They no longer own their own land. And when they longer owned their own sheep they often ended up as the hired hands of the wealthy urban dwellers, the absentee landlords who feature in so many of the Gospel parables.

These hired shepherd-servants depend for their livelihood on work that requires them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, the family members any honourable man would have stayed home to protect. As a result, shepherds were considered to be men without honour. At best, they were unreliable; at worst they were borderline bandits. Shepherds are despised as much as Samaritans. In this context, a good shepherd, like a good Samaritan, is a contradiction in terms.

As with Saint Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, Christ uses the image of the Good Shepherd, a despised external ‘other,’ to challenge our preconceptions about others. The invitation is to think about what is really important in human relationships. And Christ’s answer is always the same: compassion, individual moral character, and generous, inclusive action. We are not to condemn by assigning human beings to hated categories.

Christ constantly challenges his followers to live out the Gospel on the margins as he consistently placed himself among those who society had rejected: tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, shepherds …

He says that he is the ‘good’, the real or proper ‘shepherd’, the one who dies for his ‘sheep’, his flock (verse 11).

But the ‘hired hand’ (verse 12) does not care enough to save the sheep from the ‘wolf’. Old Testament prophets spoke of leaders of Israel in these terms, so Jesus probably speaks of them here – shepherds who are not worthy of the name.

Christ’s relationship to people is like the Father’s relationship with him (verse 15).

Who are the ‘other sheep’ in verse 16? Are they the Samaritans? Are they non-Jews, the gentiles, the nations? They will have equal status with those who already follow Christ, as part of one Church.

Christ has been given the authority to choose to die and the power to rise again from the dead (verse 18). He is in control of his own death and resurrection. A truly Easter theme in the week of the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

Christ the Good Shepherd … a window in Christ Church, Leamonsley, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 27 April 2026):

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 27 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, we lift up Pakistan and all who continue to recover from recent floods. Bless the frailest and most vulnerable, and may your presence bring comfort and renewed hope to those rebuilding their lives.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Christina Rossetti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti … she is remembered in the Church of England on 27 April 2026

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