Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 37, 15 June 2024

The chapel in Trinity College Dublin was designed in the 1790s by Sir William Chambers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Tomorrow is the Third Sunday after Trinity (Trinity III, 16 June 2024) and Father’s Day. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (15 June) remembers the life and work of Evelyn Underhill (1941), Spiritual Writer.

In the two weeks after Trinity Sunday, I illustrated my prayers and reflections with images and memories of cathedrals, churches, chapels and monasteries in Greece and England dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I have continued that theme this week, with images and memories of churches I know in Ireland that are dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Inside the chapel in Trinity College Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 5: 33-37 (NRSVUE):

[Jesus said:] 33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you: Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

The stained glass window in the apse in the chapel in TCD depicting the Transfiguration is by Mayer & Company (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Chapel, Trinity College, Dublin:

My photographs this morning (15 June 2024) are from the chapel in Trinity College Dublin. Trinity Monday is no longer celebrated in Trinity College Dublin on the day after Trinity Sunday. Instead, Trinity Monday was marked this year in TCD on 22 April, when new honorary fellows, fellows and scholars were announced. The ceremony is one of the oldest and most colourful at TCD and refers back to its foundation in 1592.

I received a post-graduate Diploma in Ecumenics at TCD in 1984, and studied classical Greek there in 1987. Later, I was twice the Select Preacher in the Chapel, and I have chaired and been the secretary of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission (DUFEM).

Until 2017, while I was on the staff of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, I was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in TCD, sitting on academic and staff committees and Courts of Examiners, supervising research and overseeing examinations. Group photographs of the BTh and MTh graduates were taken each year on the steps of the chapel in TCD. I was also a visiting lecturer on other degree courses.

Overlooking Front Square, at the heart of the TCD campus, the chapel was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1798 to form the north range of Parliament Square. Chambers was George III’s architect, and he also designed the Examination Hall on the south side of Parliament Square. The building work was overseen by Christopher Myers and his son Graham Myers, and it is likely that Myers heavily influenced the end design.

The chapel and the theatre are similar in form, creating a pleasing balance to the square and evoking a sense of Palladian symmetry with the two buildings serving as end pavilions. However, the chapel is both longer and narrower.

The classical elegance of the design is seen throughout the chapel, particularly in the stonework carved by George Darley and Richard Cranfield. Inside, the classical motif continues in the plasterwork by Michael Stapleton, spiral staircases by Robert Mallet, and the organ gallery carved by Richard Cranfield. Henry Hugh, a general carpenter throughout the project, may have worked on the pews.

The 19th century saw significant modifications to the interior, with stained glass by Clayton and Bell depicting scenes of Moses and the Children, the Ransom of the Lord, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ with the teachers of Law, installed in 1865. Polychrome floor tiles were added to designs of John McCurdy, and, in 1872, stained glass windows were installed in the apse and centre, showing the Transfiguration, to designs by Mayer & Company.

Reflecting the Anglican heritage of the college, there are daily services of Morning Prayer, weekly services of Evensong, and Holy Communion is celebrated on Tuesdays and Sundays.

The chapel has been ecumenical since 1970, and is now also used daily in the celebration of Mass for the college’s Roman Catholic members. In addition to the Anglican chaplain, who is known as the Dean of Residence, there are two Roman Catholic chaplains and one Methodist chaplain.

The chapel is often the venue for ecumenical events, such as the annual carol service and the service of thanksgiving on Trinity Monday.

The Chapel Choir in Trinity College Dublin was established in 1762 and sings twice a week at services in the chapel, Evensong on Thursdays and the Eucharist on Sundays. The choir is made up of students from across the university. There is also a student Conductor, a student Organ Scholar, and a professional Director of Music who oversee the running of the choir, its music, and its day-to-day activities.

With MTh graduates on the steps of the chapel in Trinity College Dublin

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 15 June 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Estate Community Development Mission, Diocese of Colombo, Church of Ceylon.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update. The Church of Ceylon is one of USPG’s Partners in Mission (PIM).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (15 June 2024) invites us to pray:

Use this verse to pray: Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’ (Matthew 19: 14).

The Collect:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Loving Father,
we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son:
sustain us with your Spirit,
that we may serve you here on earth
until our joy is complete in heaven,
and we share in the eternal banquet
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Faithful Creator,
whose mercy never fails:
deepen our faithfulness to you
and to your living Word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity III:

Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts
whereby we call you Father:
give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that we and all creation may be brought
to the glorious liberty of the children of God;
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 reflection

Continued tomorrow

Parliament Square, or Front Square, in TCD, with the portico of the chapel on the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Looking through the Campanile towards Regent House in TCD, with the chapel on the right and the public theatre or exam hall on the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (18) 15 June 2023

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai … designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and reopened last December (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The First Sunday after Trinity was celebrated on Sunday (11 June 2023). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Evelyn Underhill (1941), Spiritual Writer, 1941.

Before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning for prayer, reading and reflection.

Over these weeks after Trinity Sunday, I am reflecting each morning in these ways:

1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass window in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Worshippers at the reopening of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, on 12 December 2022 (Photograph: China Christian Daily)
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai:

Holy Trinity Church, Shanghai is the former Anglican church in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, and the oldest such cathedral in China. It was designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott and was consecrated in 1869.

A Scottish merchant in Shanghai, Thomas Chaye Beale of Dent & Co bought and donated the current site as a gift to the church. The first church on the site was of poor quality, and the roof collapsed after intense rainfall, on 24 June 1850.

Holy Trinity Cathedral was designed in the Gothic revival style by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The foundation stone was laid on 24 May 1866 and the church opened on 1 August 1869.

Holy Trinity Cathedral is known to local people as ‘the red church’ and is built in red brick with neo-Gothic detailing. Scott was commissioned to draw plans for the church as a replacement for the older timber-built church and to serve the growing Christian community in Shanghai.

Scott’s resulting design is spectacular and one of Scott’s masterpieces. At the time, the church had a nave, two transepts, two aisles and a chancel, each element fashioned in the Gothic style.

Holy Trinity is oriented liturgically towards Jerusalem to the west. The colonnades are carved from stone and the red exterior brickwork is perfectly laid out. Red brickwork is a primary theme throughout the building, with even the architraves on the façade being made from red brick.

Because of budgetary constraints, the original design was modified by William Kidner (1841-1900), one of Scott’s junior architects, who scaled down the extravagance of the original plans but planning to accommodate a growing congregation.

A spire was added to the original tower in 1901. The organ by JW Walker & Sons of London was installed in 1914, and was then the largest organ in Asia.

Bishop William Armstrong Russell (1821-1879) became the first Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of North China in 1872, and Holy Trinity became his cathedral. William Russell was a son of Marcus Carew Russell of Ballydavid House, Littleton, Co Tipperary. He was educated at Midleton College, Co Cork, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1847 and went to China as a missionary that year.

Russell was appointed the first missionary bishop of North China in November 1872, and was consecrated in Westminster Abbey on 15 December. He died at Shanghai on 5 October 1879.

The Diocese of North China was based in Holy Trinity Cathedral from 1875 and in 1912 it became part of the Anglican Church in China, known as Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (CHSKH, or the Holy Catholic Church in China).

The boys’ school attached to the cathedral was built in 1928. The pupils included the author JG Ballard, and it features in his novel Empire of the Sun.

Like Russell, the last two missionary bishops based in Shanghai were Irish-born. Herbert James Molony (1865-1939) was born in Dublin, and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He became the Bishop of Chekiang in 1907. A year later, the name and boundaries of his diocese were changed and he became Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang). The diocese included Hangzhou (Hangchow) and Ningbo (Ningpo), and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, became the cathedral of the Diocese of Zhejiang. He retired to England in 1937, and died in 1939.

John Curtis (1880-1962) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a curate at Christ Church, Leeson Park, Dublin and then an army chaplain in Thessaloniki. He was Bishop of Zhejiang in 1929-1949. He retired to England in 1957 and died in 1962.

The last Bishop of Zhejiang was KH Ting, Ting Kuang-hsun or Ding Guangxun (1915-2012), from 1955. He was the last surviving Anglican bishop in China, and when he died he was chairperson emeritus of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and president emeritus of the China Christian Council.

The Anglican Church in China was forcibly amalgamated in 1958 with other churches in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC).

The cathedral spire was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the church was confiscated by the Huangpu District authorities and it was converted into a cinema. A stage was installed in the chancel, a second floor and sloping floor were introduced and the brickwork was covered by plaster and painted. The cathedral was later used as police offices and the exit visa bureau in Shanghai.

The church fell into disrepair over time, but the church complex was handed over to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council as its headquarters in 2004. When I visited Shanghai, the former cinema seats were still in place. I visited the offices too, and I bought a full set of stoles in liturgical colours in the Amity shop.

The cathedral was restored by Zhang Ming Architectural Design Firm, carved teak pews were provided by a furniture factory in Zhejiang province.

Holy Trinity Cathedral Shanghai received a ‘Religious Venue Registration Certificate’ on 6 January 2022, and reopened to the public on 12 December 2022 after renovations. After being closed for 56 years, it is open once again, serving as a church.

The Protestant ‘National Lianghui’ office in Shanghai (Photograph: Flsxx/Wikipedia)

Matthew 5: 20-26 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 20 ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

21 ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.’

Holy Trinity Cathedral in Shanghai during reconstruction and redecoration (Photograph: Grafiti - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, wikimedia)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Opening the World for Children through Learning.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (15 June 2023) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the Church of Ceylon and for the long and cherished relationship that USPG hold with them. May it continue to flourish in the future.

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, is one of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s masterpieces (Photograph: GilbertScott.org / ‘The Scott Dynasty’)

Collect:

O God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you,
mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you,
grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you both in will and deed;
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.

Post Communion:

Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts:
may our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

A stole bought in the Amity shop at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai (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

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (9) 6 June 2023

The chapel in Trinity College Dublin was designed in the 1790s by Sir William Chambers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This week began with Trinity Sunday (4 June 2023). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Ini Kopuria, Founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, 1945.

Over these few weeks after Trinity Sunday, I am reflecting each morning in these ways:

1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass window in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Inside the chapel in Trinity College Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Chapel, Trinity College, Dublin:

My photographs this morning (6 June 2023) are from the chapel in Trinity College Dublin. Trinity Monday is no longer celebrated on this week in Trinity College Dublin. Instead, Trinity Monday was marked this year in TCD on 24 April, when new honorary fellows, fellows and scholars were announced. The ceremony is one of the oldest and most colourful at TCD and refers back to its foundation in 1592.

I received a post-graduate Diploma in Ecumenics at TCD in 1984, and studied classical Greek there in 1987. Later, I was twice the Select Preacher in the Chapel, and I have chaired and been the secretary of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission (DUFEM).

Until 2017, while I was on the staff of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, I was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in TCD, sitting on academic and staff committees and Courts of Examiners, supervising research and overseeing examinations. Group photographs of the BTh and MTh graduates were taken each year on the steps of the chapel in TCD. I was also a visiting lecturer on other degree courses.

Overlooking Front Square, at the heart of the TCD campus, the chapel was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1798 to form the north range of Parliament Square. Chambers was George III’s architect, and he also designed the Examination Hall on the south side of Parliament Square. The building work was overseen by Christopher Myers and his son Graham Myers, and it is likely that Myers heavily influenced the end design.

The chapel and the theatre are similar in form, creating a pleasing balance to the square and evoking a sense of Palladian symmetry with the two buildings serving as end pavilions. However, the chapel is both longer and narrower.

The classical elegance of the design is seen throughout the chapel, particularly in the stonework carved by George Darley and Richard Cranfield. Inside, the classical motif continues in the plasterwork by Michael Stapleton, spiral staircases by Robert Mallet, and the organ gallery carved by Richard Cranfield. Henry Hugh, a general carpenter throughout the project, may have worked on the pews.

The 19th century saw significant modifications to the interior, with stained glass by Clayton and Bell depicting scenes of Moses and the Children, the Ransom of the Lord, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ with the teachers of Law, installed in 1865. Polychrome floor tiles were added to designs of John McCurdy, and, in 1872, stained glass windows were installed in the apse and centre, showing the Transfiguration, to designs by Mayer & Company.

Reflecting the Anglican heritage of the college, there are daily services of Morning Prayer, weekly services of Evensong, and Holy Communion is celebrated on Tuesdays and Sundays.

The chapel has been ecumenical since 1970, and is now also used daily in the celebration of Mass for the college’s Roman Catholic members. In addition to the Anglican chaplain, who is known as the Dean of Residence, there are two Roman Catholic chaplains and one Methodist chaplain.

The chapel is often the venue for ecumenical events, such as the annual carol service and the service of thanksgiving on Trinity Monday.

The Chapel Choir in Trinity College Dublin was established in 1762 and sings twice a week at services in the chapel, Evensong on Thursdays and the Eucharist on Sundays. The choir is made up of students from across the university. There is also a student Conductor, a student Organ Scholar, and a professional Director of Music who oversee the running of the choir, its music, and its day-to-day activities.

The stained glass window in the apse depicting the Transfiguration is by Mayer & Company (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 12: 13-17 (NRSVA):

13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14 And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? 15 Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ 16 And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ 17 Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.

With MTh graduates on the steps of the chapel in Trinity College Dublin

Today’s prayer:

The theme in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) this week is ‘Protecting the Environment in Zambia. This theme was introduced on Sunday by USPG’s Regional Manager for Africa, Fran Mate, with a reflection from Zambia for the United Nations World Environment Day yesterday.

The USPG Prayer invites us to pray this morning (Tuesday 6 June 2023):

Let us pray for the Zambia Anglican Council. May it work in partnership with other Churches and organisations to spearhead environmental protection in Zambia.

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.

Post Communion:

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.

Parliament Square, or Front Square, in TCD, with the portico of the chapel on the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection<

Continued tomorrow

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

Looking through the Campanile towards Regent House, with the chapel on the right and the public theatre or exam hall on the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The day of a brief handshake with Pope Benedict XVI anda missed ‘selfie’ in the Vatican

A brief introduction to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican … almost missed by the cameras in the days before ‘selfies’ became acceptable and sophisticated

Patrick Comerford

Soon after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, Michael McGough recalled a joke in the Los Angeles Times about three German-speaking theologians who all died on the same day.

Karl Rahner, Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger all arrived at the pearly gates at the same time and are sent together to Saint Peter’s office to find out their fates.

Saint Peter points at Rahner and says ‘Karl! In my office.’

Four hours later, the office door opens, and Karl Rahner comes out. He is distraught, mumbling, ‘Oh my, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done! How could I have been so wrong! So sorry.’ He stumbles off into heaven, a testament to the mercy of God.

Hans Küng goes in next. After eight hours, the door opens, and Küng is near collapse. He too is mumbling, ‘How could I have been so wrong!’ as he lurches into heaven, another testament to God’s mercy.

Saint Peter finally calls in Joseph Ratzinger. Twelve hours later, the door opens and Saint Peter stumbles out, mumbling, ‘How could I have been so wrong?’

Many years ago, when I was chair of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission, an old mission agency founded in TCD to work in Chinam I was taking part in a conference in Rome in September 2005 on the Church in China. I was part of a small group who were invited to sit in the front row at the top steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and I was introduced – unexpectedly and albeit very briefly – by Cardinal Desmond Connell to Pope Benedict XVI.

It was an opportunity to bring greetings from Archbishop John Neill of Dublin, and this short message was conveyed graciously to the Pope by Cardinal Connell.

It is with humour that I can still recall how it was almost a missed photo opportunity too. It was the day when ‘selfies’ were still seen as selfish and were not as sophisticated and as acceptable as they are today, and another Irish priest who had a camera that day captured the moment only after we had shaken hands, as I pulled my hand back and the Pope moved on to greet some Chinese delegates to the conference.

The photograph and reports of the meeting were later carried in a number of Church publications in Ireland, including the Church of Ireland Gazette and the Church Review.

It is more than 17 years since that conference in Rome and that brief papal handshake in the Vatican that was never properly caught by the cameras. But it came to mind this morning (31 December 2022) when I heard the news that the former Pope Benedict XVI has died.

Another figure in Michael McGough’s joke, the celebrated but controversial Swiss theologian and priest Hans Küng also died recently (6 April 2021) at his home in Tübingen at the age of 93. He has lived with Parkinson’s disease for the past eight years and who lived, taught and lectured for more than 40 years in Germany.

He engaged in dialogue with Buddhism, Chinese religions, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism, became the most prominent Catholic theologian to speak in China and the first theologian to address a group of astrophysicists. His popularity was directly related to his readability, clarity, erudition, honesty, fearlessness. He was profound yet popular, intellectual yet understandable, said and wrote what he thought needed to be expressed and was passionate in his search for truth.

After seven years studying philosophy and theology in Latin at the Gregorian University in Rome, Küng was ordained a priest in Rome in 1954 and celebrated his first Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica. He completed a further three years of study in French for his doctorate at the Sorbonne and the Institut Catholique in Paris, where he wrote his thesis on Justification.

In his doctoral dissertation on Justification, Küng concluded an agreement in principle was possible between Catholic theology as set down at the Council of Trent in the 16th century and 20th century Reformation theology found in the work of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics was possible.

At 34, he was the youngest expert at Vatican II, soon joined by the Dominicans Edward Schillebeeckx of Belgium and Yves Congar of France; the German priests Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner, and John Courtney Murray, George Higgins, John Quinn, Gustave Weigel and Vincent Yzermans from the US.

His Infallible?: An Inquiry caused an uproar across the Catholic world in 1971, and made him l’enfant terrible of the Catholic Church. He questioned his Church’s teachings on infallibility, celibacy, contraception and the ordination of women as well as men.

His most popular book, On Being a Christian (Christ sein) was a best-seller when it was published in 1974, an unusual achievement for a work of scholarly theology. I bought – and I still have – the first edition in English that year.

At the end of 1979, the Vatican revoked his missio canonical or license to teach as a Catholic theologian at the University of Tübingen, where he had been Professor of Dogmatic Theology from 1963. In the end, he retained his professorship in the university's secular Institute for Ecumenical Research, which he had founded and directed since the early 1960s.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was involved in removing his teaching license. As dean of theology at Tübingen in the early 1960s, Küng had offered – and Ratzinger accepted – a professorship at Tübingen. But the future Pope left academia, and later headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor to the Inquisition, for 25 years under Pope John Paul II.

By the time I became a post-graduate student at the Irish School of Ecumenics (1982-1984), Hans Küng was seen as one the most influential theologians in the world. I was doubly blessed, because one of my lecturers, the late Revd Dr Robin Boyd, had been a doctoral student under yet another great German-speaking Swiss theologian, Karl Barth.

Many of my colleague priests remember Hans Küng’s visit to Dublin in 1985, and still regard his lecture in Trinity College Dublin during that visit as one of the seminal moments in their theological lives.

In the 1990s, Küng took on the task of preparing a ‘Declaration Toward a Global Ethic’ for the Parliament of the World Religions in Chicago in 1993. The most referenced part of the declaration was the proposition that there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions.

Little did I realise when I met Küng at that lecture in TCD almost 30 years ago that I would later share the distinction of contributing to a book with him.

In 2000, to mark the millennium in a particularly Christian way, The Irish Times ran a monthly series of features, commissioned by Patsy McGarry. The series opened with a contribution from Hans Küng, and continued each month with distinguished contributors who followed in his wake, including Jerome Murphy O’Connor, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Sean Freyne and Andrew Greely. Each month, I completed the features with a series that built up into ‘A brief history of Christianity.’

The features were collected and edited by Patsy McGarry in a book, Christianity, published by Veritas in 2001. The opening chapter was Hans Küng’s opening feature, and the second half of the book was my ‘Brief History of Christianity.’ The cover illustration was an icon I had bought in Rethymnon in Crete in 1989.

To the surprise of many, Küng requested a meeting with Ratzinger shortly after his election as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. The two had retained a distant respect for one another and maintained a limited correspondence over 45 years.

In On Being a Christian, Küng quoted the German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who said: ‘There is one thing I would like to tell the theologians: something which they know and others should know. They hold the sole truth which goes deeper than the truth of science, on which the atomic age rests. They hold a knowledge of the nature of man that is more deeply rooted than the rationality of modern times. The moment always comes inevitably when our planning breaks down and we ask and will ask about the truth.’

With the Revd Dr Alan McCormack (then Dean of Residence, Trinity College Dublin), and Archbishop Nikitas (Lulias) of Thyateira and Great Britain (then Archbishop of Hong Kong) at the conference on the Churches and China in Rome in September 2005

The death of John Bartlett, friend, priest and colleague

With Canon John Bartlett in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Patrick Comerford

I am saddened to learn of the death last night of my friend and colleague, the Revd Canon Professor John Bartlett.

John was the principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College (1989-2001) while I was training for ordination in 1999-2000. I had first met him while he was a Professor in Trinity College Dublin and a fellow, where he lectured in Old Testament and Inter Testamental Studies.

He was the Precentor of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, when I was ordained deacon in 2000 and priest in 2001. When I joined the staff of the Church of Ireland Theological College (CITC), later the Church of Ireland Theological Institgute (CITI), and the academic staff of TCD, I benefitted from the caring interest he took in and the support he provided for those who followed in his footsteps.

Later, when I was a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, he was a regular colleague at the altar. I remember fondly how he brought his copies of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament with him each Sunday in the cathedral.

We were involved together for many years in the publication of the Church of Ireland journal Search. I was a guest of John and Olivia on many occasions in their home in Dalkey, Co Dublin, and we shared many interests, ranging from Biblical archaeology to New Testament Greek, Greece, the classical world and the Middle East.

As a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, he invited me to speak on Irish foreign policy in the Middle East at a seminar in the RIA. Later, I was once of his successors as chair of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission.

Canon Bartlett was predeceased by his wife Jan. He is survived by his widow Olivia and his daughters Penny, Jessica and Helen. His funeral takes place in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on Tuesday (23 August).

‘Professor JR Bartlett MRIA’ by Olivia Bartlett (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 89, College of the Ascension, Birmingham

The former College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham … now the Al Mahdi Institute

Patrick Comerford

During the Season of Easter this year, I am continuing my theme from Lent, taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter – an ‘in-between Sunday’, between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. This week, we are in an ‘in-between week’, between Ascension Day and the Day Pentecost. My photographs this week are from places I associate with the life of USPG. Earlier in this series, I introduced the Chapel in the USPG offices in Southwark and its stained glass windows (20 March 2021). My photographs this week are from places I associate with the life of USPG.

This morning (16 May 2021), on this Sunday after the Ascension, my photographs are from the College of the Ascension, later the United College of the Ascension, on Weoley Park Road in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

While I was working on Christian-Muslim relations as the Foreign Desk Editor at The Irish Times, I was offered the opportunity to take a course in Christian-Muslim Dialogue at the College of the Ascension 25 years ago, in March 1996.

The course leader, Canon Andrew Wingate, was later the Canon Theologian at Leicester Cathedral, until recently was a Chaplain to the Queen, and was made an OBE in 2009 for his work in interfaith relations. He was the founding director of Saint Philip’s Centre for Study and Engagement, Leicester, where I also took a course in 2012, and is now a consultant and teacher in Inter-Faith Relations editing and producing many books in the field.

I was at the College of the Ascension in the days immediately after the Dunblane Massacre. Saint Patrick’s Day fell on Sunday that year, and Andrew invited me to preach in the college chapel that morning. I was then a reader in Dublin diocese, and a group of ordinands from Wales who were in the college for a pre-ordination retreat were encouraging about my own explorations of the path to ordination.

The College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham, opened in 1923, when women still faced barriers in access to university education. The opening of the college added to a ‘mini-university’ of small colleges then emerging in Selly Oak, built with Cadbury vision and generosity.

The planned college was proposed by Charles Gore, Bishop of Birmingham, who realised that because Selly Oak was gaining recognition in progressive missionary circles. Until then, however, the Federation of Selly Oak Colleges had been an exclusively Nonconformist project, and for a traditionally high church Anglican mission society to send its women there was, as one Quaker observed, ‘an amazing step.’

The College of the Ascension, with its dramatic chapel and buildings inspired by Lutyens, were opened by Princess Mary and Archbishop Davidson.

For 40 years, the College of the Ascension remained an exclusively women’s institution. SPG’s men were mostly clergy and were assumed to need no further preparation. The United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG) was formed with the merger of SPG and the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, and in 1965 USPG relaunched the college, opening its doors to male students too.

The Methodist College at Kingsmead closed in 1993, and after many years of discussion, USPG and the Methodist Church agreed to form the United College of the Ascension. The Selly Oak Colleges merged with the University of Birmingham in 1999, and the college later moved to the campus of the Queen’s Foundation, Edgbaston, as the Selly Oak Centre for Mission Studies, formed in 2006 to train mission partners from the churches in Britain in preparation for service overseas and to welcome leaders from the wider world church to study at Queen’s.

The former College of the Ascension in Selly Oak has since been sold by USPG, and this is now the Al Mahdi Institute, a centre for Muslim scholarship, education, research and outreach in the ‘Twelver’ tradition, with a long-term commitment to dialogue with Muslims and non-Muslims.

I have since returned to Selly Oak, staying at Woodbrooke, the Quaker-run college, for a conference organised by the China Desk of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, representing the Dublin University Far East Mission.

The former chapel of the College of the Ascension in Selly Oak … when this was a chapel, I preached here 25 years ago on Saint Patrick’s Day 1996

John 17: 6-19 (NRSVA)

[Jesus said:] 6 ‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.’

The former College of the Ascension became the United College of the Ascension under the sponsorship of USPG and the Methodist Church

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (16 May 2021, Seventh Sunday of Easter) invites us to pray:

Knowing God,
May we trust in Your wisdom,
And follow the path You have set us on.
Let us be faithful disciples,
Spreading the Word.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The College of the Ascension, with its Lutyens-style building and dramatic chapel, opened in Selly Oak in 1923

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

I have also stayed at Woodbrooke, another Selly Oak college … Europe’s only Quaker Study Centre, it is based in the former family home of George Cadbury near Bourneville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 22, the Chapel, Trinity College Dublin

Inside the chapel in Trinity College, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent and Easter this year, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, a photograph of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This week I am offering photographs from seven churches that have connections with my education. My photographs this morning (10 March 2021) are from the chapel in Trinity College Dublin. I received a post-graduate Diploma in Ecumenics at TCD in 1984, I was twice the Select Preacher in the Chapel, I chaired the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission, and until 2017, while I was on the staff of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, I was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in TCD.

Matthew 5: 17-19 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (10 March 2021) prays:

Let us pray for all who work in hospitality that through their work they bring about a deeper sense of service to others.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Chapel and Front Square in Trinity College Dublin (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 house in Rathgar holds the story of a sporting missionary bishop in China

Clarendon at 46 Terenure Road East was once the home of the Curtis family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

One of the many fine Victorian homes between Terenure and Rathgar is Clarendon, a gracious detached Victorian family home dating from the 1840s or 1850s and now on the market at an asking price in the region of €3 million, having been restored by its owners in recent years.

Clarendon was the childhood home of John Curtis (1880-1962), the last Irish Anglican bishop to work in China, and a cousin of the renowned historian Edmund Curtis (1881-1943).

His career was the stuff of schoolboy adventure stories and comic strips: he was a well-known soccer and rugby player; when the Japanese invaded China at the start of World War II, he became a prisoner of war in Shanghai; and he stayed on in China as a missionary bishop after the revolution, living in Hangzhou until he was forced to leave in 1950.

Thomas Henry Curtis, merchant, of Clarendon House, Rathgar, Co Dublin, died on 26 November 1895 at the age of 40. His wife, Edith Elizabeth, had died five years earlier on 29 November 1890 at the age of 35. Both are buried in Mount Jerome, alongside Thomas Curtis JP (1825-1899), and other members of the family.

John Curtis was born in 1880, and spent part of his childhood at Montpellier Hill, near the North Circular Road gate of the Phoenix Park, and then in Blackhall Street, next to the King’s Hospital School. The family moved to Hollybrook Road, Clontarf, and also lived at Clarendon on Terenure Road East.

John was sent to Rathmines School, founded by the Revd Charles William Benson on Lower Rathmines Road, and then studied at Trinity College Dublin.

In his late teens, he played at inside-left for Bohemians, and on the first team in the 1897-1898 season, when Oliver St John Gogarty played at outside-left. They were on the Bohemians team that won the 1897-1898 Leinster Senior Cup final, defeating Shelbourne 3-1 and progressing to the semi-finals of the Irish Cup.

He played again for Bohemians in the following season, one again the winning team in the Leinster Senior Cup final and reaching the Irish Cup semi-final. In the 18 games he played that season, he scored 21 goals.

In 1899-1900, Bohemians got to the Irish Cup final against Cliftonville after John Curtis scored a vital goal in the semi-final against Belfast Celtic in the Jones Road sports ground, now better known as Croke Park. Bohemians lost that final 2-1 in Grosvenor Park in Belfast.

The closest John Curtis came to an international cap was representing Leinster in an inter-provincial game against Ulster. At TCD, he also played both soccer and rugby for Trinity College Dublin.

He was ordained deacon by Archbishop Peacocke in 1903 and priest in 1904, serving first as a curate in Christ Church, Leeson Park. By then, his two younger brothers, Edward (Ned) and Harry, were both playing for Bohemians.

After three years as a curate in Leeson Park, John Curtis volunteered for missionary work with what is now the Dublin University Far East Mission (DUFEM) in China. He arrived in Fujian in south-west China 1906 and worked first in Fujian (1906-1928), and later as Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang) until 1950.

He married a fellow missionary, Dr Eda Stanely Bryan-Brown, in Funing 1914. World War I broke out a few weeks later, and in 1916 John returned to Europe and became an army chaplain in Egypt, East Africa and Macedonia in northern Greece, where he was chaplain in Thessaloniki with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Coincidentally, his brother Harry was an officer in Thessaloniki at the same time.

John and Eda returned to China in 1919. At one stage, he wrote with insight from Funing: ‘The situation out here politically is more and more perplexing. It seems as if we are drifting nearer and nearer to some sort of a “Red China”.’

Undaunted, he stayed on in the region until 1926. The Diocese of Zhejiang (Chekiang) became vacant with the retirement of the Dublin-born Bishop Herbert James Molony (1865-1939), and John Curtis was elected the new Bishop of Zhejiang.

When he was consecrated in 1929, he was the first foreign-born bishop of the Anglican Church in China (CHSKH, Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, literally the Holy Catholic Church of China) to be consecrated in China. His consecrating bishops included his predecessor, Bishop Molony, and the Chinese-born Assistant Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang), TS Sing. The other consecrating bishops included the Bishop in North China, FL Norris, an SPG missionary, and the Bishop in Shantung, Thomas Arnold Scott.

As Bishop of Zhejiang, John Curtis lived in Hangzhou, once described by Marco Polo as ‘the City of Heaven, the most beautiful and magnificent in the world.’ The diocese covered 36,680 square miles, and by 1950 had a population of 23 million, of whom 11,574 were Anglicans.

The diocese was divided into three areas: Ningbo (Ningpo), Linhai (Taichow) and Hangzhou (Hangchow), where he lived. In addition, a special commission from the Archbishop of Canterbury extended Bishop Curtis’s jurisdiction to the 3,000 Anglicans in the so-called ‘English congregations in Shanghai, including Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai.’

In his first years in office, Curtis worked on bravely despite banditry, civil war and famine throughout his diocese. ‘In his long journeys about his diocese, mainly on foot, he was a hard man to follow,’ the Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, later recalled. ‘In a New Year’s sermon in the cathedral, with an unconscious Irishness, he urged us to “advance in all directions”.’

During his time, there was real growth in Sunday schools and in the work of women missionaries. After 25 years of separate existence, the Chinese CMS was incorporated into the Zhejiang diocesan board of missions in 1930, making mission an integral part of the life and work of the diocese.

With the advance of the Japanese invading forces, large areas of the diocese came under Japanese control, schools were closed, and ordination candidates were sent out of the diocese to Nanjing. On Christmas Day 1937, 90,000 Japanese troops entered Hangzhou. As living conditions deteriorated, Curtis constantly visited the hospitals, medical camps and refugees, his overcoat pockets bulging with bottles of milk for the children. On what he called his ‘milk rounds,’ he also shepherded large numbers of frightened women and children to the safety of the refugee camps.

By June 1938, only three districts of diocese remained outside Japanese control. But Curtis spent six weeks touring the whole diocese that autumn. By 1940, the number of baptised Anglicans in the Diocese of Zhejiang was 12,000 – more than double the number in 1920. However, in September 1942 all the missionaries were called in for questioning. Curtis was arrested in November and taken to the Haipong Road Camp in Shanghai and then held in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong. On one occasion, the Japanese threatened to shoot him if he continued to criticise their treatment of his fellow prisoners, but it was said that in internment he was a great asset to the morale of the camp.

After World War II, some Irish Anglican missionaries began to return to China, but Curtis reported: ‘We are further away from self-help now than when I came here 17 years ago.’ At the end of his career, he appeared depressed about the prospects of the Chinese church surviving on its own. Yet he agreed it could be said ‘we are passing from mission relationships to Church relationships.’

Eventually, John and Eda were forced to leave China for the last time in 1950. They moved to England, and he became the vicar of Wilden in Worcestershire. They eventually retired to Leamington in 1957.

John died suddenly on 11 July 1962 at the age of 82, and Eda died 18 months later. In an obituary in the Church Times, a former Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, wrote of him: ‘He was a faithful father in God, a wise counsellor and a sympathetic friend … memories of him we shall treasure, and lives shaped by his influence and example will carry on God’s work which he loved and made so attractive by his own life and ministry.’

A CMS missionary in China at the time, WRO Taylor, recalled Curtis as a bishop with ‘distinctively Irish gifts’ that were valued in non-Anglican ecumenical circles which had little use for bishops.

John and Eda Curtis were the parents of two sons, John Guy Curtis (1919) and Arthur Bryan Curtis (1924), and a daughter Joan. The eldest son John died in a flying accident in January 1943. He was an RAF pilot and was only 23. Their daughter Joan married and moved to Sligo.

Their surviving son, Arthur Bryan Curtis, studied at Oxford and served in World War II. Arthur played rugby for Oxford University and London Irish, and in 1950 won three Irish international caps as a flanker. He later became a headmaster in Zimbabwe.

Arthur’s son, David Curtis played cricket for Oxford and also played Rugby for Ireland, winning 13 caps and appearing as a centre during the 1991 Rugby World Cup. Continuing a family tradition, David’s sons Angus and Graham are playing Rugby with Ulster and Angus has been capped for Ireland at under-20 level.

Many years after the Curtis family had left Clarendon, the house on Terenure Road East was the home of Colonel Charlie Russell, a combat pilot with the RAF in World War I who became the founder of Aer Lingus.

The year 1934 brought triumph and tragedy to the Russell family. In May that year, Colonel Russell outlined the plans for a new national airline. But four months later, Russell witnessed the death of his nephew, Captain Arthur Russell, in a plane crash in front of Clarendon.

Arthur Russell, who had followed in his uncle’s footsteps as a pilot, had taken an Irish Air Corps Fairey plane up from Baldonnell and was trying to impress his uncle by buzzing his house. But he flew too low, and collided with the top of a tree right opposite Clarendon. Colonel Russell stepped outside just in time to see his nephew’s plane explode in flames. Arthur was killed instantly.

Bishop John Curtis, an Irish missionary bishop in China

Let us, the flock of Christ, … cry out: Remember us all, who sing your praises!

The new Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain, Metropolitan Nikitas (Lulias) of Dardanelles

Patrick Comerford

The Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has appointed a new Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. At a meeting in Constantinople this week [12 June 2019], Metropolitan Nikitas (Lioulias) of Dardanelles was elected unanimously.

At the same time, the Holy Synod decided thanked the former Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain, Archbishop Gregory, who has retired after many years of ministry due to advanced age.

Metropolitan Nikitas takes over a large diocese with more than 100 churches and monasteries in England, Scotland, Wales, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.

Metropolitan Nikitas has served in numerous capacities in the Orthodox Church worldwide, and more recently he has been the Director of the Patriarchal Institute of Orthodox Theology in Berkeley, California.

Before that, he was appointed Metropolitan of Hong Kong in 1996, a Metropolis that was created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate a year earlier to help expand the Orthodox presence in Asia.

His appointment completes what many in Orthodox circles are calling the ‘shake up’ of the three As, all large regions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate where the senior bishops were advanced in age and or where there had been public controversy – England (Αγγλια), America and Australia. Metropolitan Makarios was elected Archbishop of Australia last month, and Metropolitan Elpidophoros will be enthroned Archbishop of America in New York on 22 June.

All three jurisdictions have new archbishops who have been appointed unanimously by the synod of bishops at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Metropolitan Nikitas was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1955. He studied at the University of Florida, where he received his degree in Religion (1976). He then attended the Theological School of the Holy Cross of Boston, where he graduated in 1980, and completed his postgraduate studies at the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1982).

He was ordained a Deacon in 1985 by Archbishop Jacob of America and in the same year was ordained priest.

He served in the Church of Saint Constantine and Saint Helen in Merriville, Indiana, and in 1987 became the secretary of the Diocese of Chicago. In 1988 he received the office of Archimandrite and became a Protosyncellus in the same diocese.

He completed his studies in History and Russian language in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Later, he taught courses in Orthodoxy at the Loyola University of Chicago.

On 2 December 1996, he was unanimously elected the first Metropolitan of Hong Kong and South-East Asia, and he was ordained bishop at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George.

When he moved to California as Director of the Patriarchal Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, he was also appointed Metropolitan of the Dardanelles Metropolis in 2007.

We first met at San’Anselmo, the Benedictine abbey and university in Rome, when I was chair of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission and took part in a conference in Rome in September 2005 on the Church in China.

We met again when I accompanied the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill, on a visit to China and Hong Kong in 2006 to meet Church leaders, visit theological colleges and to build links between the Church of Ireland and the Church in China.

In Hong Kong, Archbishop Nikitas presented me with a scroll that says in rich Chinese calligraphy:

The Apolytikion of the Chinese Saints Martyred 11 June 1900 at the Boxer Uprising, Tone Three:

Let us, the flock of Christ, with love and piety now glorify with hymns and truly joyous odes the faithful Martyrs of the truth who suffered for Christ in China. For having confessed the Faith, they all bravely went unto death as lambs which were sacrificed for our Shepherd and Master Christ. And therefore to the Martyrs we cry out: Remember us all, who sing your praises!

With the Revd Dr Alan McCormack (then Dean of Residence, Trinity College Dublin), and Metropolitan Nikitas of the Dardanelles (then Archbishop of Hong Kong) at the conference on the Churches and China in Rome in September 2005

A brief Papal encounter that the cameras almost missed in the days before ‘selfies’ became acceptable

A brief introduction to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican … almost missed by the cameras in the days before ‘selfies’ became acceptable and sophisticated

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIII, Proper 16B). This morning [26 August 2018], the services in the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes are: 9.30 a.m.: Morning Prayer, Castletown Church, Kilcornan; and 11.30 a.m.: Parish Eucharist (Holy Communion 2), Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

The readings are: I Kings 8: (1, 6, 10-11,) 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6: 10-20; and John 6: 56-69.

The Gospel reading this morning concludes a series of Sunday readings from the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse in Saint John’s Gospel, with the theme: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me’ (John 6: 56).

This morning, the visiting preacher at both services is the Revd Kevin Conroy, of Dalkey Parish in the Diocese of Dublin. It was a privilege some years ago to supervise Kevin’s MTh research and dissertation, and we have remained good friends since his student days.

Although I am not preaching this morning, in the prayers I shall be using intercessions in both churches to mark the visit to Ireland this weekend by Pope Francis I.

Last Tuesday, I was invited to take part in a service in Saint John’s Cathedral, Limerick, that was part of the preparations throughout Ireland for this visit.

Many years ago, when I was chair of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission, I was taking part in a conference in Rome in September 2005 on the Church in China, and was part of a small group who were invited to sit in the front row at the top steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and I was introduced – unexpectedly and albeit very briefly – by Cardinal Desmond Connell to Pope Benedict XVI.

It was an opportunity to bring greetings from Archbishop John Neill of Dublin, which were conveyed graciously by Cardinal Connell. And, with humour, I can recall how it was almost a missed photo opportunity too – it was the day when ‘selfies’ were still seen as selfish and were not as sophisticated and as acceptable as they are today.

With the Revd Dr Alan McCormack (then Dean of Residence, Trinity College Dublin, and Metropolitan Nikitas of the Dardanelles (then Archbishop of Hong Kong) at the conference on the Churches and China in Rome in September 2005

Thirteen years after that conference in Rome and that brief papal handshake in the Vatican that was never properly caught by the cameras, I am praying this morning for the visit of Pope Francis.

Our Roman Catholic neighbours in this diocese and throughout Ireland are welcoming Pope Francis to this island this weekend in the context of the World Meeting of Families. This is an important event, not only for the Roman Catholic Church but for all Christians in Ireland, as we welcome someone who is exercising remarkable Christian leadership on a global scale and in difficult circumstances.

The Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, the Right Revd Kenneth Kearon, has written to his fellow Roman Catholic bishops, and given, the very warm and cordial relationship we share with our Catholic parishes and neighbours, he suggests:

● That we pray in church for Pope Francis and other global Christian leaders at this time.

● That we pray in church for the World Meeting of Families and for family life.

● That where appropriate we send a message, possibly a letter or a visit, to our local Catholic parishes, assuring them of our prayers and good wishes at this time.

He says, ‘This is an important time of celebration for our Roman Catholic neighbours and we should assure them that we share in their joy and celebrations.’

He has circulated the following prayers:

A Prayer for Christian Leaders:

Hear us, O Lord, as we lift up before you all who bear the bewildering responsibility of Christian leadership among the churches of the world. Especially at this time we pray for Pope Francis and his visit to Ireland, for Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury and His All Holiness Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch.

Give them wisdom beyond their own, integrity in all their dealings, and a resolve to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness for all humankind.

We ask it in the name of Christ.

A Prayer for Family Life:

God our Father, whose Son Jesus Christ lived at Nazareth as a member of a human family; hear our prayer for all homes and families, and especially for our own, that they may be blessed by his presence and united in his love.

We ask this in his name.

Collect:

Almighty God,
who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
Help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through him who was lifted up on the cross,
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post-Communion Prayer:

God our creator, you feed your children with the true manna,
the living bread from heaven.
Let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage
until we come to that place
where hunger and thirst are no more;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hymns:

112, There is a redeemer (CD7);
533, God of grace and God of glory (CD 533);
614, Great Shepherd of your people, hear (CD 35).

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me’ (John 6: 56) … an icon in a shop window in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Dublin Family Who Became Missionary Martyrs in China

Robert and Louisa Stewart with Mrs Ahok. Photograph: DUFEM archives

Patrick Comerford

When Rev. Robert Warren Stewart (1850-1895), his wife Louisa (Smyly), two of their children and seven other missionaries, were murdered in China in 1895, the massacre might have marked the end of Irish Anglican mission work in China. Instead, the story became an example of religious and missionary heroism and became an inspiration for many people who went from Ireland to China with Anglican mission agencies.

Robert Warren Stewart was born into a privileged background in Dublin on 9 March 1850. His father, James Henry Stewart (1805-1889), a Dublin magistrate, was a nephew of the Duke of Wellington, while his grandfather, Henry Stewart (1749-1840), was twice MP for Longford in the Irish House of Commons before the Act of Union.

Robert received an English public school education at Marlborough College, but returned to Ireland to study at Trinity College Dublin. Initially, he planned a legal career in London, but he experienced a spiritual crisis and a religious conversion in Richmond, Surrey, and at the age of 25 offered himself for service to the Church Missionary Society in 1875.

He was ordained in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, on Trinity Sunday 1876, and shortly afterwards he married his childhood friend from Dublin, Louisa Katherine Smyly, a daughter of Ellen Smyly (1815-1901), founder of ‘Mrs Smyly’s Homes’.

There was no time for a honeymoon, and Robert and Louisa left for China in September and on 14 November they arrived in Fuzhou in Fujian Province, halfway between Shanghai and Canton.

Robert’s first years in China were spent in training Chinese teachers and catechists, while Louisa took charge of a school training Chinese women to teach from the Bible. However, their educational work was interrupted in 1878 with the renewal of a conflict known as the Wu-shih-shan Case, when the missionaries’ theological college was burned down and the mission was expelled from the city.

In 1885, Robert was on leave and back home in Dublin when he was asked to address one of a series of meetings at the beginning of the new academic year in TCD. The organisers were inspired by the recent formation of university missions in Cambridge (1877) and Oxford (1880), and Robert Stewart was so inspiring a speaker that on one night forty young men came forward and offered themselves for missionary work.

The meetings resulted in the foundation of two university-linked missions – the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur and the Dublin University Fukien Mission, now the Dublin University Far East Mission.

Back in China, Robert Stewart suffered severely from dysentery in China, and after another return visit to Dublin in 1891 he went on a fundraising tour to Australia, India and Canada before returning to China in full health in the autumn of 1893. Before returning to China, the Stewarts left their eldest child, Arthur Dudley Stewart, and two other children in the care of Robert’s father who was living in Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire).

Back in China, the Stewarts began working in Gutian (Ku-Cheng) in north-east Fujian. But China was now at war with Japan, and the war stirred an open, armed revolt against the provincial government.

Early on the morning of 1 August 1895, in the small village of Huashan (Hwa-Sang), in the hills above Gutian, the children who had returned with them to China were gathering flowers when they were attacked suddenly by a band of Buddhist group of rebels known locally as the Zhaijiao or ‘Vegetarians.’

Five-year-old Herbert Stewart, and his baby sister Hilda, were murdered along with their Dublin-born nurse Helena Yellop. Within minutes on that summer morning, Robert and Louisa Stewart, Hessie Newcombe from Ireland and five other women missionaries – three from Australia and two from England – had been murdered too. The other Stewart children survived miraculously.

The Kucheng Massacre was one of the worst attacks on foreigners in China before the Boxer Rising in 1899-1901; the only comparable event in missionary history in China is the Tianjin Massacre of 1871. But instead of causing the surviving missionaries to take flight and flee, the murders fuelled a wave of enthusiasm that swept through the Church in Fujien, and saw a growth in support in Ireland for the work of the Dublin University Mission.

Reverend Stratford Collins, who had arrived in China in 1888 as the first missionary from the Dublin University Mission, later recalled that shortly before his martyrdom Stewart had asked him: ‘Why does not someone found a society for the study of the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, and what good might be done!’ That chapter includes the words: ‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or arrogant or rude … It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends’ (I Cor 13: 4-8).

Collins, who returned to China that year, asked some friends as he left Ireland: ‘Is it not better to be called away suddenly in the mission field than to die bit by but at home?’ Two years later, Collins was drowned in the River Min in 1897, and his distressed widow and two of their children drowned tragically at sea on the way home to Ireland.

The Stewarts were the parents of eight children in all. Their eldest son, Arthur Dudley Stewart (1877-1948), had stayed at home with his grandfather in Dun Laoghaire. He too became a missionary in China, and worked in Hong Kong for 28 years, and for 21 years he was the principal of Saint Paul’s College.

Between them, CMS and the Dublin University Mission supplied four bishops who served the Anglican Church in China: William Armstrong Russell, the first Bishop of North China; Herbert James Moloney, Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang), John Hind, Bishop of Fujian (Fukien), and John Curtis, Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang) and the last of the Irish Anglican bishops to work in China.

Today, the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission continues to work on fostering and developing links between the Church in China, the Anglican Church in Hong Kong and the Church of Ireland.

Further reading:

Patrick Comerford and Richard O’Leary, ‘Heroism and Zeal: Pioneers of the Irish Christian Missions to China’, China and the Irish, Jerusha McCormack, ed. (Dublin: New Island and RTÉ – Thomas Davis Kecture Series, 2009), pp 73-87.
R.M. Gwynn, E.M. Norton and B.W. Simpson, TCD in China – a history of the Dublin University Fukien Mission 1885-1935 (Dublin: Church of Ireland Printing and Publishing, 1936).
Jack Hodgins, Sister Island – A History of the Church Missionary Society in Ireland 1814-1944 (Dublin: CMS Ireland, 1994).

‘The Dublin Family Who Became Missionary Martyrs in China’ was first published in Salvador Ryan (ed), Treasures of Ireland, Vol III, To the Ends of the Earth (Dublin, Veritas, 2015), pp 142–145.