Ten synagogues I have visited in 2018

Inside the Scuola Spagnola in Venice, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on images for full-screen resolution)

Patrick Comerford

In previous years, in my end-of-year reviews at the end of December, I have often summarised the year’s events in my life, as well providing my own commentary on the year in news, sport, and church life.

However, newspapers and television stations provide substantial summaries of the past year at this time of the year, and the consequences of ‘Brexit’ and the Trump presidency have been devastating and depressing at one and the same time throughout 2018.

Instead, I have decided to end the year on note of celebration over the next few days, looking back at ten countries I have visited this year, ten cathedrals I have visited in Ireland, ten synagogues I have visited, and ten places I have visited in Ireland this year.

The façade of the New Synagogue on Oranienburger strasse in Berlin survived Kristallnacht and World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

1, The new Synagogue, Berlin:

This year marked the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht or the ‘Night of Broken Glass.’ On the night of 9/10 November 1938, Nazi Party members, the Hitler Youth and other people went on a government-sanctioned rampage against Jews throughout Germany and Austria. That night 80 years ago is remembered as Kristallnacht or the ‘Night of Broken Glass,’ and many say it marks the unofficial beginning of the Holocaust.

The New Synagogue on Oranienburger strasse narrowly escaped being destroyed that night through the brave intervention of a district police chief, Wilhelm Krützfeld. It is around the corner from Tucholsky strasse, where I was staying in Berlin.

When the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue opened in 1866, it was seen as an architectural masterpiece. The opening was such an important event that the attendance included Count Otto von Bismarck, soon to be the first chancellor of the German Empire.

The name ‘new’ refers to the reformed, modern rites and practices. The building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch and completed after his death by Friedrich August Stüller. It was designed in the Moorish style to resemble the Alhambra in Spain, and could hold 3,200 people.

The heavily damaged New Synagogue was essentially demolished in 1958, except for the front façade and entrance. The Centrum Judaicum Foundation opened here in 1988 and the rebuilt New Synagogue opened in 1995 as a museum, cultural centre and community offices.

The congregation in the New Synagogue today is Berlin’s only Masorti synagogue. Gesa Ederberg became the first female pulpit rabbi in Berlin in 2007 when she became the rabbi of the New Synagogue.

The site of Berlin’s first synagogue at Heidereutergasse, dedicated in 1714 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

2, The Alten (Old) Synagogue, Berlin:

Berlin’s first major Jewish house of worship, the Alten (Old) Synagogue on the Heidereutergasse, was dedicated in 1714, almost 420 years after the first documented mentioning of Jews in Berlin in 1295. By 1354, six Jewish families were living in the Kleinen Judenhof or ‘small Jewish court’ settlement. Jews were first expelled from Brandenburg in 1446, but they were allowed to return to Berlin in 1447.

A site for the first Jewish cemetery was bought in 1672 on Grosse Hamburger Strasse, and Berlin’s first synagogue, on Heidereutergasse, was consecrated in 1714. The synagogue was then called the Great Synagogue and was rebuilt in 1854-1855 by Eduard Knoblauch (1801-1865).

The Alten (Old) Synagogue remained unscathed in the Kristallnacht. The last service there took place on 20 November 1942, and it was destroyed by bombing in 1945. Today, there are 19 or so synagogues or Jewish houses of prayer in Berlin, compared with 94 synagogues in 1932.

The Synagogue Rebbi Akiva on Rue Synagogue was originally built in the mid-19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

3, The Synagogue Rebbi Akiva, Tangier:

At one time Tangier had over 20 synagogues. Many of these synagogues are now closed, but I found signs on Rue des Synagogues, a twisting and turning street in Tangier, pointing to two of them.

The Synagogue Rebbi Akiva on Rue Synagogue was originally built in the mid-19th century. It was restored by Rabbi Moshe Laredo in1902, and was rebuilt in 1912. More recently it has been converted into a museum of Tangier’s Jewish community.

The Moshe Nahon Synagogue, the last surviving functioning synagogue in the old city, was built in 1878 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

4, The Moshe Nahon Synagogue, Tangier:

At the very end of Rue Synagogue, behind a nondescript door, I found myself at the Moshe Nahon Synagogue, the last surviving functioning synagogue in the old city. From the street, appearances are deceptive, but inside this is a monumental and lavish building, and one of the most beautiful synagogues in Morocco.

This synagogue was built in 1878 and was a working synagogue until it fell into despair in the late 20th century. But it was renovated in 1994, revealing intricately covered carvings that are illuminated by hanging lamps and many Jewish artefacts.

The Scuola Spagnola was founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

5, The Scuola Spagnola, Venice:

The Scuola Spagnola or Spanish Synagogue in the Ghetto in Venice was founded by Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Jews around 1580. This is one of the two functioning synagogues in the Ghetto, and it is open for services from Passover until the end of the High Holiday season.

The synagogue was founded by Jews whose families had been expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the 1490s. They reached Venice usually via Amsterdam, Livorno or Ferrara, in the 1550s. This four-storey yellow stone building, designed by the architect Baldassarre Longhena, was built in 1580 and was restored in 1635.

It is a clandestine synagogue, tolerated on condition that it was concealed within a building that gives no appearance of being a house of worship outside. Inside, however, it is elaborately decorated, with three large chandeliers and a dozen smaller ones, as well as a huge sculpted wooden ceiling.

The Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue in Venice was founded in 1528 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

6, The Scuola Grande Tedesca, Venice:

The Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue in Venice was founded in 1528 by the Askhenazi Community and is the oldest synagogue in Venice. The unknown architect had to overcome considerable difficulties to give the appearance of regularity to the asymmetric area of the main hall. He achieved this by building an elliptical women’s gallery and repeating the same motif in the banisters of the lantern-like opening in the centre of the ceiling, giving a feeling of unexpected depth.

This Synagogue was restored often over the centuries. The area with the Ark juts out on the outside over the Rio di Ghetto Novo, with a niche which is also to be seen in the Schola Canton, the Schola Italiana and the Schola Levantina.

The Scola Levantina … founded by Levantine Jews who brought different customs of worship and dress (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

7, The Scola Levantina, Venice:

The Scola Levantina in Venice was founded in 1541 by the Levantine Sephardi Jews who came from the Eastern Mediterranean between 1538 and 1561. It is probably the only synagogue in Venice that has kept nearly all its original features and has the only noteworthy exterior, with its two simple and severe facades interrupted by three orders of windows and the polygonal niche (diagò or liagò) found in the other synagogues in the Ghetto.

The Prayer Hall was chosen in 1950 to honour the martyrs of Nazism and Fascism. The inscription over the portal reads: ‘Blessed be he who enters, blessed be he who goes out.’

A tablet in the entrance hall reads: ‘If you understand, oh, man, what your end in the world will be, and if you show charity discreetly, then when you depart this life your place will be assured: then your chalice will be full of goodness and on your head will be placed a crown.’ Another tablet, dated 1884, commemorates a visit to Venice by Sir Moses Montefiore in 1875.

The Monasterioton Synagogue is the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

8, The Monasterioton Synagogue, Thessaloniki:

The Monasterioton Synagogue at the top of Syngrou Street is the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki. It was built in 1927 by Jews from Monastir in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The synagogue was saved during World War II because it had been requisitioned by the Red Cross as a warehouse. The building was structurally damaged by the earthquake in 1978, but it was restored by the Greek government and is one of the three functioning synagogues in Thessaloniki.

In all, there are three surviving synagogues, some surviving Jewish mansions on Vassilisis Olgas Avenue, the Modiano Market, and a new Jewish Cemetery in Stavroupoli. The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at the south-east corner of Plateia Eleftherias (Liberty Square) recalls the 50,000 Greek Jews exterminated in the Holocaust. The memorial is a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid of a seven-branch menorah whose flames are wrapped around human bodies in death.

The bimah in the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

9, The Etz Hayyim Synagogue, Chania:

Etz Hayyim synagogue stands in a small alley off Kondhilaki Streer in Evraiki or the former Jewish quarter in the old town of Chania in Crete. There has been a synagogue here since the Middle Ages, and it is in the heart of the walled maze of alleyways and narrow streets that spread out from the harbour with its mediaeval lighthouse and the port’s surviving mosque.

There had been Romaniote or Greek-speaking Jews in Crete for more than 2,300 years, and they survived wave-after-wave of invaders, including Romans, Byzantines, Saracen pirates, Venetians and Ottomans. They were strongly influenced by Sephardic intellectual traditions with the Spanish Jews in Crete in the late 14th century, and the two Jewish communities intermarried and accommodated one another.

After World War II, the Etz Hayyim synagogue stood empty. The sleeping building was desecrated, and was used as a dump, a urinal, and kennel, damaged by earthquakes and filled with dead animals and broken glass, its mikvah or ritual bath oozing mud and muck.

The revival of the synagogue is due to the vision and hard work of Nicholas Stavroulakis who grew up in Britain, the son of a Turkish Jewish mother and a Greek Orthodox father from Crete. He first learned about Crete’s lost Jews when he was a young man, and his family ties inspired many visits to this island. He returned to Crete in 1995, set about restoring the synagogue, and Etz Hayyim reopened in 1999.

The synagogue’s floor plan is in the Romaniote, or Greek tradition. The ark faces the eastern wall, while the bimah faces the western one. The rebuilt mikvah is fed by a spring. The scattered remains of the tombs of past rabbis have been recovered and they have been reburied.

In a hallway, a simple plaque bears the names of the Jews of Chania who drowned in 1944 while they were being shipped to Athens and on to Auschwitz.

Etz Hayyim suffered two arson attacks in the same month in 2010. But there was international outage, and donations poured in for the restoration of Etz Hayyim. Today, barely more than a dozen Jews live in Crete, and Evraiki, the former Jewish quarter, is now crammed with tavernas, cafés and souvenir shops. Etz Hayyim holds weekly Shabbat services in Hebrew, Greek, and English, and is home to a research library with 4,000 volumes. Rabbi Gabriel Negrin, who was once a student in Crete, regularly comes to Chania from Athens to help with the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. I was both privileged and humbled to be a guest of Rabbi Gabriel Negrin and the community at a memorial service in Etz Hayyim on 17 June to mark the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community of Crete.

Kehillas Ya’akov was the first Mizrachi Synagogue in Britain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

10, Kehillas Ya’akov, London:

The East End of London is the cradle of Jewish life in England. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was said there were as many Jews living in one square mile of the East End of as there are throughout Britain today – over 250,000 people.

Today, estimates say, about 2,000 Jewish people live in the East End. Many of them are elderly, and there are just three synagogues still functioning in the East End. After the two-day residential meeting of the trustees of USPG in Limehouse, in January, I strolled through the East End of London, and photographed the Kehillas Ya’akov was the first Mizrachi Synagogue in Britain.

An English Heritage report said Kehillas Ya’akov or the Synagogue of the Congregation of Jacob at 351-353 Commercial Road ‘is a remarkable survival ... and is all the more exceptional for continuing in use as a synagogue.’

This is no ordinary synagogue. From the outside, it looks unremarkable, sandwiched in the middle of a parade of shops on the Commercial Road in Stepney. But inside, there is a fusion of two worlds: one that has disappeared, and another that may be fast disappearing. Here East European Jewry meets the Jewish East End of London, and it is here that hope springs eternal.

Despite the date 1921 on the façade, the synagogue was founded in 1903 and is one of the last three synagogues still functioning in the East End.

The cupola of the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue in the Spandau area of Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Ten countries I have visited in 2018

Gondolas tied up and waiting for the tides to fall at Rialto Bridge, just a five minute walk from the Palazzetto San Lio in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

In previous years, in my end-of-year reviews at the end of December, I have often summarised the year’s events in my life, as well providing my own commentary on the year in news, sport, and church life.

However, newspapers and television stations provide substantial summaries of the past year at this time of the year, and the consequences of ‘Brexit’ and the Trump presidency have been devastating and depressing at one and the same time throughout 2018.

Instead, I have decided to end the year on note of celebration over the next few days, looking back at ten countries I have visited this year, ten cathedrals I have visited in Ireland, ten synagogues I have visited across Europe, and ten places I have visited in Ireland this year.

The wisteria was already fading in Hall Court in Sidney Sussex College when I visited Cambridge this summer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

1, England:

As with every year, I have visited England throughout the year. I have stayed twice in London during two-day residential meetings of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel): at the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine in Limehouse in the East End in January, and in November in the Kairos Centre in south-west London, close to the campuses of Roehampton University and overlooking Richmond Park.

I was also in London for meetings of USPG’s trustees in May and September, and at the meetings of USPG trustees and council and the annual USPG conference at the High Leigh Conference Centre near Hoddesdon in July, and a regional meeting of USPG volunteers and supporters in Birmingham at the end of November.

I also visited Lichfield three times this year: for two days of retreat and reflection and to celebrate my birthday in January, to lecture on the Wyatt architectural dynasty in April at the invitation of Lichfield Civic Society, and again in November, for a short visit to Lichfield Cathedral and the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital.

I missed the annual summer school organised in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, but I had a short visit to Cambridge in early July, while some of the fading wisteria could still be seen in the courts of Sidney Sussex College.

The arcades around the bailey seen from the Chapel of Saint Sebastian in the Fort de Salses, near Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

2, France:

In May, I spent a few days in the south of France, staying in Sainte-Marie-la-Mer, a coastal town near Perpignan. Although I had been to Paris half-a-dozen times or more in the past, this was my first time back in France since 2006, and my first time to visit the South of France.

In Perpignan, I visited the Palace of the Kings of Majorca (Palais des Rois de Majorque), the Cathédrale St-Jean, with its Gothic architecture, its wrought-iron bell tower and its cloistered cemetery, and the statue of the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí facing la Gare de Perpignan, which Dalí proclaimed it to be the ‘Centre of the Universe’ after he experienced a vision of cosmogonic ecstasy there in 1963.

Beyond Perpignan, I visited Collioure on the Côte Vermeille, close to the French border with Spain at the Pyrénées. Collioure, with its typical Mediterranean bay, attracted several Fauvist artists who made it their centre in the early 20th century. They were inspired by the colours of Collioure, its castle, mediaeval streets, and the lighthouse converted into the church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges. Almost 100 reproductions of works by Matisse and Derain are exhibited around the port and harbour in the very same place where they painted the originals in the early 20th century.

I also visited the hills and narrow streets of Elne, including the Cathedral of Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie, and the Fort de Salses, also known as the Forteresse de Salses, an impressive and massive Catalan fortress 20 minutes from Perpignan, off the road to Narbonne.

Tucholskystraße is close to the New Synagogue in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

3, Germany:

I passed through Frankfurt Airport twice (4 and 9 April), on my way to and from Thessaloniki to experience the celebrations of Orthodox Easter in the northern Greek city.

Both stopovers allowed time to eat, but I was back in Germany later in the year (11 to 14 September), when I spent three or four days in Berlin. I stayed on a corner of Tucholskystraße, around the corner from Oranienburger Straße and the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue, built in 1859-1866 as the main synagogue of Berlin’s Jewish community.

The visit included a day at the former concentration camp in Sachsenhausen and a four-hour walking tour of Jewish Berlin’s destruction and rebirth.

I also visited the Pergamon Museum, the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and the site of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) and a number of historic churches, including the Marienkirche and Sophienkirche, and strolled along Unter den Linden.

Travelling over the Alps, somewhere above Austria, on my way between Dublin and Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

4, Austria:

After experiencing Easter in Thessaloniki, it took three flights to get back to Dublin in April: a flight to Vienna, a flight to Frankfurt, and from there to Dublin. For the travel weary, some say you cannot count being in a country if you have not stayed overnight. Most agree that it does not count if you only touch down for a refuelling or to change flights. But for me, the safe definition is if you have to pass through passport control and have at least a cup of coffee.

In the past, I have stayed in Vienna in 2002, when I was on a panel at a seminar organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and stayed over twice in 2005 on way to and from China for Church visits.

This time there was time for no more than a cup of coffee in the airport … but I suppose that still counts.

On one of the many daily walks on the beaches of Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

5, Greece:

I was in Greece twice this year, and stayed in three places. I stayed in Thessaloniki from 4 to 9 April, experiencing Orthodox Easter, but also visiting the city’s only surviving synagogues, the old Jewish quarter, the Jewish Museum, some surviving Jewish mansions on Vassilisis Olgas Avenue, and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Liberty Square, a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid that has been desecrated a few times this year.

In Thessaloniki, there was time for meals with friends, walks along the seafront, visits to churches, cathedrals and a few quiet hours in the Monastery of Vlatadon which is perched like a balcony above the city and the harbour, as well as a full-day visiting Mount Athos.

Later, I spent two summer weeks (6 to 20 June) back in Crete, with one week in Rethymnon, staying at Varvaras Diamond Hotel near the beach in Platanes, and a week at the Corissia Princess Hotel in Georgioupoli.

There were days strolling through the labyrinthine back streets of Rethymnon, long lingering dinners with friends, and days on the beaches in Platanes and Georgioupoli, visits to cathedrals, churches and icon workshops, visits to Chania in the west of Crete, to mountain villages, through gorges and across the White Mountains, to Hora Sfakíon and Frangokastello on the south coast, to the Monastery of Saint George in Karydi, and to villages and olive groves in the mountains.

Las Casas de la Judería, a Seville hotel that is worth visiting … just for itself (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

6, Spain:

With a new passport in my hands from August, I visited Spain at the end of October, and spent four nights in Seville (23 to 27 October. I stayed in the Hotel Las Casas de la Judería de Sevilla, an unusual hotel complex made up of 27 traditional houses, where the 134 different rooms are linked through 40 patios, courtyards, gardens and a labyrinth of small passageways, balconies and Roman-style tunnels.

The hotel takes its name from its location in the heart of the old Jewish quarter of Seville, just minutes away from the main landmarks in the city.

As well as visiting the Cathedral, the Real Alcazar and the other sites every tourist tries to visit in Seville, I also visited places in Seville and Tarifa associated with the extraordinary life of Josefina de Comerford, Doña Josefa Eugenia Maria Francisca Comerford MacCrohon de Sales (1794-1865), who was involved in Spanish political intrigues in the early 19th century.

These include the Convento de la Encarnación, where she was confined after her death sentence was commuted to life in a convent, and the Corral del Conde (the Count’s Yard), where she lived out most of her later years.

In a side street in Tangier, once known as a city of spies and smugglers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

7, Morocco:

My visit to Seville also offered the opportunity to visit Tangier in Northern Morocco (25 October). Tangier once had a reputation as a safe haven for spies and their spying activities. It played host nests of spies throughout the Cold War and before that during World War II, and the association of Tangier with spies and their secretive lifestyles has made the city a location for many books and films.

Gondolas at the Palazzo Ducale, with San Giorgio Maggiore on the other side of the canal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

8, Italy:

Some important dates in the family calendar were marked with a few days in Venice near the end of the year (5 to 9 November 2018). I stayed at the Palazzetto San Lio in the heart of Venice, between the Rialto Bridge and Saint Mark’s Square. It is at the end Calle del Frutariol in the sestiere or district of Castello, and just a stone’s throw from Rialto and the Grand Canal.

I had visited Venice in the past while staying in other p;aces in northern Italy. But this was my first time to stay in Venice itself. Palazzetto San Lio is a Venetian palace built in the 17th and 18th centuries, and has been owned by an old Venetian family for generations.

During those few days, there were visits to Saint Mark’s Basilica and Saint Mark’s Square, many of the great churches of Venice, the Ghetto and its memorials and synagogues, boat trips along the Grand Canal, and visits to islands in the lagoon, including Murano, Burano and Torcello.

The railway station at the Slovenian side of Europa Square, the crossing point between Italy and Slovenia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

9, Slovenia:

While I was staying in Venice, I visited the divided town of Gorizia, both Gorizia and Nova Gorica, crossing the border between Italy and Slovenia a number of times, arriving and leaving from one railway station in Italy, and having lunch in another railway station in Slovenia.

The frontier dividing Gorizia remained in place until Slovenia became part of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007.

Today, the border between Italy and Slovenia is almost invisible, an artificial line that runs between Gorizia in Italy and Nova Gorica in Slovenia. The most celebrated border crossing is at Europa Square, an open pedestrian square in front of the Transalpina railway station. But there are other border crossings between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, for the border is a straight line that ignores the natural contours and bends in the streets and buildings, still seen in the remains of a fence that once ran across streets and even divided gardens.

Today, the two towns form one conurbation that also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba. Since May 2011, these three towns are joined in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board. As I stepped between three towns and two countries, no-one asked me for a passport, no one asked me to take my place in a queue, asking for identity, or my opinion on who should be in the European Union and who should be out.

Cherry blossoms at the City of Armagh Hotel during a break at the General Synod this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

10, Ireland:

Of course, most of the year was spent in Ireland, but I visited all four provinces, stayed in places in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland – in Armagh during the General Synod – and visited each of the cathedrals in the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe.

This year, 2018, was a year that I was blessed with opportunities to take part in baptisms, weddings and funerals, ecumenical services, and the ordinary, every-day life of a parish that brings me many blessings. There was community engagement too, and I was invited to lift two All-Ireland cups this year: the Sam Maguire Football Cup when it visited Ardagh, Co Limerick, as part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the Ardagh Chalice; and the Liam McCarthy Hurling Cup, when the Limerick Hurling Champions visited Askeaton.

But, most of all, I was blessed this year by the people I love and the people who love me.

Hands across the border at Europa Square, at the border between Slovenia and Italy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This Evening: Ten places I have visited in Ireland in 2018.

How USPG volunteers are ‘a way of … inviting other people into our mission’

The statue of Bishop Charles Gore outside Saint Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham … the venue for today’s workshop for USPG volunteers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

I have spent much of today [23 November 2018] at a regional day for volunteers and supporters of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) in Saint Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

The day began with Morning Prayer at 8 a.m. in Lichfield Cathedral with the Bishop of Lichfield, Michael Ipgrave, and the Dean of Lichfield, Adrian Dorber, and a short visit to the chapel of Saint john’s Hospital in Lichfield, which helped to shape my faith when I was in my late teens almost 50 years ago.

The USPG volunteers at today’s meeting in Birmingham came from dioceses throughout the Midlands, including Lichfield, Coventry, Derby, Birmingham, Southwell and Nottingham and Worcester.

This year, USPG has organised regional days like this in Carmarthen, Manchester, Peterborough and Birmingham, and there are more workshops early next year in London, Bishop’s Stortford, Bicester and York.

Today, USPG has about 50 trained, volunteer speakers. Dioceses and parishes have had 91 USPG speakers this year, and while 24% of these engagements were met by staff, 76% of speaking engagements were met by volunteers.

This is a turnaround from two years ago, when the percentages were the other ay around, which just goes to show how important volunteers are in the work and mission of USPG.

During the morning, Rebecca Woolgar, USPG’s Volunteering and Stewardship Manager, introduced a number of aspects of USPG’s work, highlighting the latest edition of Transmission, including its pages on ‘Out and About in Britain and Ireland,’ the Prayer Cards for Advent 2018, legacy giving, and the opportunities for experience of USPG’s work through two programmes: Journey with Us offers an opportunity for from three months to a year, followed by reflection weekends and opportunities to share their experiences; while Expanding Horizons includes short-term opportunities for priests and others.

She also updated us on USPG’s work with the two Anglican Churches in the Philippines – the Independent Church of the Philippines (IFI) and the Episcopal Church in the Philippines.

Church leaders in the Philippines are facing threats, intimidation and imprisonment in a climate of fear, and Bishop Carolos Morales has been jailed because of his involvement in the peace process.

Short film presentations depicted the threats facing children and their families face in the Philippines, where the IFI is standing with these people and highlighted the plight of the Lumad people in Mindanao.

Under the Dutente regime, Lumad schools are attacked regularly, 53 schools have been forcibly closed, 12 have been destroyed, and teachers and students face illegal arrest and trumped-up charges. Their plight goes unreported in mainstream media in the Philippines, and they struggle to have their voices heard.

Earlier this year, Father Chris Ablon spoke at Greenbelt about the work of the IFI, with oppressed minority group in the Philippines.

Rebecca Boardman of USPG’s Global Relations spoke of USPG’s work with the Diocese in Europe as it works with migrants and responds to changes in migration, focussing on this work in Greece, France and Morocco.

As she pointed out, migration has always existed, and the Bible is a story of people on the move. It is not a new trend in Europe, but since 2015 received major attention in Britain and Europe.

Today, in 2018, an estimated 68.5 million are forcibly displaced worldwide, including migrants and refugees, and this figure may be underestimated. Often they are forcibly displaced because of climate change, crop failure and an increasingly hostile environment.

Nor are migrants always crossing national borders. Of the 68.5 million people, 40 million are internally displaced, meaning almost 60 per cent of migrants remain in their own country, and many unwilling to leave their own country.

Germany hosts about 1 million, but Turkey hosts 3.5 million refugees, while UNHCR figures show that at the end of last year [2017] there were 121,837​ refugees in the UK, 40,365​ pending asylum cases and 97 stateless persons in the UK. In the 12 months prior to June 2018, the UK received 27,044 applications from main applicants, a 1% drop from the previous year.

In 2015, the year the photograph of Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach woke Europe up to the plight of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean. That year [2015], about 1 million arrived in Greece, mainly on the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios and Kos, from Turkey. By 2018, the number of people moving through Greece has fallen to 17,000, even though the same problems remain in Syria, Afghan, Iraq and other countries.

Many people are prevented from moving on from Turkey because of the impact of an agreement between the EU and Turkey. Borders across Europe have started to shut down, barbed wire fences have gone up, and there is a knock-on impact.

There are common European asylum agreements about redistributing people across Europe, but Britain has opted out of all these agreements, has its own legal framework.

The number of people crossing into Greece dropped significantly in 2017, and more people are crossing into Italy, and now from Morocco into Spain. The route is moving from the East Mediterranean to the West Mediterranean, and the routes have become more dangerous, with people taking more risky and dangerous journeys, and reports of people trafficking, sex trade and slavery in Libya, Turkey and other countries where people are held back.

The Diocese in Europe works in 40 countries, from Morocco in north Africa through Europe and Turkey into the former Soviet Union. Many of the churches are small chaplaincies, with few people able to give substantially, and USPG is engaged with a number of critical locations in the diocese: Athens, Calais, and Tangier and Casablanca.

The numbers travelling through Europe rose rapidly in 2015, and Father Malcolm Bradshaw, then the Anglican chaplain in Athens, saw tents appearing in the main squares close to Saint Paul’s Church. The Diocese in Europe responded by calling on USPG to work with the Anglican presence in Greece.

The context in Greece changed substantially. Many people have been resettled or re-homed and have access to jobs and the opportunities to sustain themselves. The work in Greece has strengthened co-ordination between churches, with long-term key partnership with the Greek Orthodox Church. Working together for the past three years has gone beyond meeting humanitarian and has brought the Churches to work together.

In France, Canon Kirilie Reed has been appointed the chaplain and Refugee Project Officer in Pas-de-Calais, with the support of the Diocese in Europe, the Diocese of Canterbury and USPG.

In Morocco, USPG is supporting Saint Andrew’s Chaplaincy in Tangier, where Father Denis has been seconded from Nigeria to work with west Africans and provide pastoral support and care, as well as working with the Roman Catholic church in Tangier.

Other work supported by USPG includes supporting a church working with Sudanese refugees northern Finland, and a women’s hostel in Istanbul.

Rachel Woolgar also spoke of fundraising as a way of engaging with mission.

USPG’s volunteers are generous, and, as the theologian Henri Nouwen says in The Spirituality of Fundraising, fundraising in the Church is ‘first and foremost a form of ministry’ and ‘a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission.’

She introduced us to USPG’s Lent Course for 2019, ‘The Prophetic Voice of the World Church.’ This work with the Church of North India and Church of South India includes working with the problems surrounding people trafficking in India, environmental issues in the schools, and oppressed women.

Later in the afternoon, Kate Winser from Norwich spoke of her nine-month experiences in Belize on a ‘Journey with Us’ programme.

The new Crucifixion Icon from Bethlehem seen in Lichfield Cathedral after Morning Prayer this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

(Updated 7 December 2018, with a correction to the statistic quoted)

Why I am wearing a poppy this morning 100 years after the end of World War I

A wreath of poppies on my grandfather’s grave in Portrane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today [11 November 2018] is Remembrance Day, marking the centenary of Armistice Day and the day World War I came to end 100 years ago on 11 November 1914.

Later this morning, there will be one service of commemoration for the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes, with a Remembrance Sunday service in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, that begins with the Act of Remembrance and that concludes with a celebration of the Parish Eucharist.

Throughout these islands, throughout this day, names will be read, wreaths will laid, bugles will be blown, silence will be kept for a minute, and poppies will be worn – but also looked on in scorn with silences accompanied by deep in-takes of breath sucked through clenched teeth.

I am a pacifist, and have been all my adult life.

So, you may ask, why am I wearing a poppy today, and why I have been wearing one for the past week or so?

Let me share two examples of why I think it is important to continue marking Remembrance Day, and why I think we should be asking some questions as we mark the centenary of the end of World War I.

Stephen and Bridget (Lynders) Comerford on their wedding day in Donabate in 1905 (Comerford family collection)

My first example is the story of my own grandfather.

Stephen Edward Comerford was hardly a young man when he signed up with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1915. He had already been widowed and had seen the tragic death of his eldest child, Edmond Comerford. When he left Dublin for Gallipoli in 1915, he was a 47-year-old man, leaving behind in Ranelagh his second wife, my grandmother – they were married just 10 years earlier – and her five young children and step-children.

Perhaps he knew he was helping his own country and the smaller nations of Europe; perhaps he hoped for a better job not only for himself, but for his children too when they grew up. Either way, he knew he was doing the right thing – for his country, and for his people – when he joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers – ‘the Toffs and the Toughs’ – in 1915.

Within days, he was sent to the Greek island of Lemnos and on to Gallipoli and Suvla Bay. He was among the few survivors evacuated to the Greek city of Thessaloniki. But in the severe Greek winter, many of those soldiers suffered frostbite, dysentery and other sicknesses. Then, in the summer’s heat of 1916, more of them came down with malaria and were evacuated from Thessaloniki.

When I visit Thessaloniki, most recently during Easter week this year, and walk through its streets and climb its hills, I imagine how he must have watched his comrades die from the wounds they received in Balkan battles, from the bitter cold of winter and from the frostbite – many of them young enough to be his sons – while his wife and children wondered whether they were ever going to see him again.

As I stop at a church here or a monastery there, looking out over the Bay of Thessaloniki, I imagine the prayers he prayed, hoping he would return alive to his wife and children in Ranelagh and to her family in by the sea at Portrane.

Stephen Comerford was discharged on 3 May 1916, three days after the Easter Rising ended in 1916, and was sent back to Dublin. His malaria was life-threatening but life-saving – for a few months at least. The war ended on 11 November 1918 and a month later, on 14 December 1918, his youngest child – my father, also Stephen Edward Comerford – was born in Rathmines.

Later, Stephen was decorated with the three standard World War I medals – the Victory Medal, the British Medal and the 1914-1915 Star. But his health continued to deteriorate, no more children were born, and he died alone in hospital at the age of 53.

My father was the only one of my grandfather’s seven children to have children himself. So malaria saved my grandfather’s life, however briefly, and ensured that he had grandchildren.

He died just two years after my father was born, and he was buried in the old Church of Ireland churchyard in Portrane, close to my grandmother’s parents. But the inscription on his gravestone makes no mention of his part in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, or of how he died.

Ironically, the gravestone also gives the wrong age for him at the time of his death. Stephen Comerford was born on 28 December 1867, and died on 21 January 1921 at the age of 53. But the gravestone says he died at the age of 49 – the age he was when he came back from the war in 1916. As his health deteriorated, he must have remained 49 for ever in my grandmother’s heart.

My grandfather’s only reward was those three war medals – but even these were lost in the various family moves between Ranelagh, Rathmines, Terenure and Rathfarnham. His lonely hospital death was filled with sadness, terror and dread. His story typifies how those soldiers were forgotten by those who sent them to war and how their stories were not handed on in their families, fearful they would be marginalised further as the political climate changed on this island.

When I am in Cambridge, I often take time off in Grantchester, for a time the home of the English war poet Rupert Brooke. Before he died during the Gallipoli landings in 1915, he wrote:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed …

In Ireland, my grandfather remained 49 for ever in my grandmother’s heart. And there is some corner in Thessaloniki that is for ever Ireland.

In the centenary of commemorations we are marking during this decade, the contribution of men like my grandfather must not be undervalued, still less forgotten.

A wreath of poppies on the memorial to Private Robert Davies in Lichfield City station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

My second example comes from a train station I know well in the English Midlands. A significant part of my life-story is linked to the cathedral city of Lichfield. And regularly, as I arrive or catch a train at Lichfield City station, my eye is caught by a poppy wreath hanging on a monument to a teenage soldier who was shot dead in the station in 1990. Private Robert Davies was off-duty and only 19 when he was shot dead by the IRA on 1 June 1990, waiting for a train home to his parents in Wales. He had been a soldier for only 12 weeks<, he had never shot anyone, he had never been to war, and his murderers have never been brought to justice.

Some years ago, a new walkway behind the station in Lichfield was named Robert Davies Walk. His parents Des and Helen Davies were present, and his father said: ‘There is now a little part of Wales in the heart of England.’

Robert Davies would be 47 today – the age my grandfather was when he went to war. Unlike, my grandfather, though, he never returned home. He has no children or grandchildren – he is remembered by his sister and his parents, still grieving a young man murdered by terrorists who had the gall to take life, to murder, to create grief, all in the name of this country, and in the name of all who live on this island.

‘Pax 1919’ ... the spires of Lichfield Cathedral seen from the gates of the Garden of Remembrance … does God continue to work through mighty acts and in history? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the Diocesan Synod for the Diocese of Europe some years ago, the then Archdeacon of Germany and Northern Europe, Jonathan Lloyd, posed a number of pertinent questions for discussion:

● A hundred years on, what does World War I mean for humanity’s self-understanding, for Europe and its place in the world and our understanding of God?

● Are the centenaries of 2014-2018 celebrating or commemorating?

● What is our purpose and message and what place do penitence and reconciliation have?

World War I is beyond the memory of all of us, but we all live with its consequences. For that war led eventually to the monster that became Nazi Germany and to the Holocaust; it tore apart the Balkans in a way that continues to create suffering from Bosnia to Bucharest, for refugees, Romanies and other minorities across Europe; and it contributed to too many problems we still face in the Middle East with the drawing of artificial boundaries and the creation of artificial states.

Archdeacon Jonathan Lloyd suggested a number of ways we can best honour and mark these centenaries, including:

● Hearing the stories from people of all sides of the conflict.

● Writing and using prayers that do justice to all the feelings that are going to arise.

● Examining the lessons we should continue to learn today.

● Remembering key Christian witnesses and heroes. Not all of them are men, as the monument to the women of World War II in Whitehall in London reminds us. Not all of them are soldiers, as in the case of Nurse Edith Cavell, or the brave people who went against popular culture and declared themselves conscientious objectors. They include doctors and medics with the Royal Army Medical Corps. They include non-combatants of every age and generation whose cities, towns, villages and farms were destroyed.

● And, finally, praying for forgiveness, healing and peace.

The memorial to the women of World War II near the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I am a pacifist, but I willingly wear a poppy today, if only to say that my grandfather and men like him should never have been neglected, and their sad stories should never be forgotten, nor the sad stories of the widows and children they left behind.

I wear it today if only to say that the murderers of 19-year-old Robert Davies in Lichfield should not have the last word about the value of a young man’s life, nor about what it is to be Irish today.

I wear it today to say that we must find the ways needed to put all wars behind us, to put aside all hatred and violence, to say that when we remember that we must remember with sorrow, with gratitude and with forgiveness, but without bitterness or anger.

I wear it today to say that the call of nationalist ideologies must never twist us, must never distort the love we should have for others, and must never allow us to deny our shared humanity.

May God grant to the living Grace,
to the departed Rest,
to the Church and the world peace and concord,
and to all us sinners Eternal Life, Amen.

A prayer for the healing of the nations at Westminster Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This posting includes material in a sermon preached at the Remembrance Day Service in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, on 12 November 2017 and a sermon preached at the Remembrance Day Service on 10 November 2013 in the Chapel of the King’s Hospital, Dublin.

Reaching a new landmark makes me ask what 3.5 million people look like

Around 3.5 million people live in the Greater Athens region in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I try not to worry about how many readers this blog attracts each day, or each month, still less about the number of hits this blog has had since I started blogging over eight years ago, in July 2010.

I want to write in this style because I think it is the right way to share my ideas, from my sense of humour to my deepest values. But I am determined not to write in a particular way in the hope of attracting a greater number of readers.

Do I know who I am writing for? Did Thomas Addison know who was going to read his essays in the Spectator or TS Eliot know who was going to buy and read and his poems?

On the other hand, I suppose, Shakespeare did worry how many people were going to pay to see his plays on the stage of the Globe.

But I am no Shakespeare, and certainly no Addison or Eliot, nor does my livelihood depend on my writing.

On the other hand, the occasional response from a reader can so positive that it makes it all worth the effort and the energy that it takes to keep a blog like this going.

And so, I have kept a tab on some landmarks for this blog, and there was a certain sense of satisfaction in noticing that earlier this day this blog had passed another landmark. By early this afternoon [21 September 2018], this blog had recorded a total of 3.5 million individual hits since I first began blogging over eight years ago.

Since I began blogging, it took two years to reach 0.5 million hits in July 2012. This rose to 1 million by September 2013, 1.5 million in June 2014, 2 million in June 2015, 2.5 million in November 2016, and 3 million by October 2016.

What do 3.5 million people look like?

Well, 3.5 million is the population of Puerto Rico, Bosnia and Uruguay, and the population of the Republic of Ireland was around 3.5 million people from the mid-1980s until the first half of the 1990s.

Today, 3.5 million people live in Berlin, Aleppo, Dakar, Casablanca and the Greater Athens area, the Attica region in Greece.

The Attica region, with a population of around 3.5 million people, includes greater Athens, a number of suburban towns and the port of Piraeus, one of the world’s largest passenger ports.

Today’s metropolis of Athens, with its 3.5 million people, is the political, social, cultural and economic capital of Greece. Greater Athens is a metropolitan area that extends over 583 sq km.

Surprisingly, the Athens suburbs are among the most thinly populated outlying city districts anywhere. The municipality of Athens has an area of 39 sq km, with a population of 665,000 people living inside city limits in 2016.

Tourists at the harbour in Rethymnon this summer … Crete welcomes 3.5 million visitors a year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Crete welcomes more than 3.5 million visitors annually; mammoths first found themselves on the island of Crete as early as 3.5 million years ago.

Both the Greek Orthodox Church of Constantinople and the Georgian Orthodox Church have 3.5 million members. The Church of Greece pays about €3.5 million in taxes a year.

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has about 3.5 million members, and so too has the National Baptist Convention of America.

Around 3.5 million German tourists travelled to Turkey last year, over 3.5 million tourists visited Israel, and over 3.5 million tourists visited Cyprus.

About 8.7 million people visit Ireland each year, and the UK is the largest source of overseas visitors … with 3.5 million visitors.

More than 3.5 million visitors come to Cambridge every year. Which is totally unconnected with the fact that each year over 3.5 million people in 130 countries sit the Cambridge Assessment English exams, the world’s leading certificates for English language learners.

Licensed buskers have an audience of around 3.5 million Tube passengers on the London Underground every day, and it is said the number of vegans in the UK has reached an all-time high of 3.5 million.

About 3.5 million EU citizens living in the United Kingdom will have to apply for a new immigration status after Brexit and must prove their identity to gain ‘settled status,’ although large numbers will be unable to complete the whole process digitally.

In Ireland, over 3.5 million people are members of credit unions, making the credit union movement across Ireland is the most successful in the world with the highest membership per capita. On the other hand, there are 3.5 million members of the National Trust in the United Kingdom.

Although he won the election, Donald Trump continues to claim that 3.5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election in the US. The information he used was compiled from only 462 counties in 38 states, yet the entire US comprises over 3,000 counties in 50 states.

Many of those other countries might well have substantially fewer registered voters on their rolls than adult residents who are eligible to vote … which all goes to show that Trump is the biggest peddler of ‘fake news’ and lies, and knows nothing about how to count either the number of people at his inauguration or 3.5 million people.

For those who prefer real news, the New York Times has 3.5 million paid subscriptions, and in Europe the largest-circulating newspaper is the German Bild at 3.5 million.

In terms of spending power, Kythnos Island in Greece was up for sale recently for €3.5 million. The island in the west of Cyclades and surrounded by the Aegean Sea, covers 191,182 square metres, and is just an hour from Athens by boat. It already has 20 to 25 picturesque small houses, and the price had dropped from the original €5 million advertised price.

Aristotle Onassis bought the Greek island of Skorpios in 1962 for just 3.5 million drachmas, but that was then the equivalent of about £10,000.

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin … 3.5 million people live in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Fedamore House, Fedamore, Co Limerick, the home of Gerry McManus, younger brother of billionaire Limerick businessman JP McManus, is on the market with an asking price of €3.5 million.

Lough Rusheen House, a luxurious, five-bedroom, family home on the shores of Rusheeen Bay in Barna, is the most expensive property on sale in Co Galway, with a €3.5 million price tag.

Or you could buy the former Kenilworth Motors site in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, a high-profile site that is zoned for residential development.

The Clarion Hotel in Limerick, Ireland’s tallest hotel, was put on the market recently by the receivers for €3.5 million, just months after Limerick’s Radisson Blu Hotel was sold for €3.5 million. The Strand Hotel was given conditional planning permission in recent months to increase to over 200 rooms as part of a €3.5 million upgrade.

Ballymagarvey Village, a popular wedding venue in Co Meath, restored in recent years from a dilapidated property, has announced plans for a €3.5 million expansion to begin next year.

Irish Water, in partnership with Limerick City and County Council and supported by RPS and Roadbridge, recently completed a 12-month contract to find and fix leaks on the public water network. As a result, over 3.5 million litres of treated water which had been lost to leakage every day is now available to supply homes and businesses in Limerick City.

Bicycles outside Sidney Sussex College in the summer sunshine … more than 3.5 million visitors come to Cambridge every year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A pilgrim visits the monasteries on Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain

The peaks of Mount Athos reach their highest point at 2,033 metres (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on images for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

On the shores of the Chalkidiki peninsula in north-east Greece, a 14th century Byzantine castle stands above a small sandy beach at Ouranoupolis. The castle is uninhabited today, but over an 800-year history it has housed visiting Byzantine emperors, Orthodox monks and Anatolian refugees.

The castle was built in the early 14th century as part of a farm owned by the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos. Decades later, Byzantine emperors exempted the tower and the farm from taxes, and monks from Vatopedi continued to live in the tower as they farmed the surrounding countryside until 1922.

There are 20 monasteries on Mount Athos, known to Greeks as the Holy Mountain (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Greek government confiscated the tower and the monastic land around it in 1922 to settle Greek-speaking refugees who had been expelled from Ataturk’s Turkey. The first boatload of refugees came from Caesarea, and refugees continued to arrive each year up to 1928.

The village was known as Prosforion until 1946, when the name was changed to Ouranoupolis, inspired by the unexplored site of an ancient town nearby founded in the reign of Alexander the Great.

Ouranoupolis remained cut off from the rest of Greece until a harsh winter forced the villagers to cut the first road out in 1959. No longer isolated from the rest of mainland Greece, Ouranoupolis was poised to take advantage of the beginning of tourism in the 1970s after the fall of the colonels’ regime.

‘City of the Heavens’

Fishing boats beached on the shore at Ouranoupolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The name Ouranoupolis means ‘City of the Heavens.’ But for most of the summer Ouranoupolis remains a haven from noisy and boisterous tourism, coming to life in the early morning as coaches arrive bringing people to catch the early morning ferries to Mount Athos, and coming back to life again when the ferries return and the cafés and restaurants do a brisk and busy trade.

I had last visited Mount Athos when I spent Easter Week in 2004 in Vatopedi, the monastery that once owned the tower and lands in Ouranoupolis. I returned to Mount Athos earlier this year while I was staying in Thessaloniki.

The Castle at Ouranoupolis was once inhabited by monks from Vatopedi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Mount Athos is known to Greeks as the Holy Mountain (Aghion Oros) and it forms its own autonomous Athonite State within the boundaries of Greece. With 20 monasteries and 12 sketes or smaller monastic houses under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Mount Athos has been the spiritual and intellectual centre of Orthodoxy for centuries.

Many of the monasteries are known for their opposition to ecumenism, and Esphigmenou, the northern-most monastery, is particularly outspoken. In an escalating conflict, the monks have defied eviction orders by both church and state, and even Orthodox visitors find anything but a warm welcome at Esphigmenou, where monks have draped a banner from the battlements declaring: ‘Orthodoxy or Death.’

A pilgrims’ journey

The offices of Mount Athos in Thessaloniki … visitors need a special permit or visa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Mount Athos is a Unesco-listed world heritage site. The monasteries and their schools of icon-writing and painting have influenced art and architecture throughout the Orthodox world, from Greece and Cyprus to Romania and Russia. Over 2,000 monks live ascetic lives in the monasteries and sketes, in secluded isolation from the rest of the world.

It was a two-hour, 140 km bus journey from Thessaloniki to Ouranoupolis. There we caught one of the many morning boats that sail along the west coast of Mount Athos as far as the southern tip, where the peaks of this mysterious and miraculous peninsula reach their highest point at 2,033 metres.

Ferries leave for Mount Athos each morning and return in the afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Only men may visit Mount Athos, all visitors need a special permit or diamoneterion, priests need a special invitation from the Ecumenical Patriarch, and the Holy Mountain is forbidden to women and children. On our four-hour boat trip, there were women and children on board, and no-one had a visitor’s permit. Although we could not disembark at any of the monastic piers or visit any of the monasteries, for many this was the closest they were ever going to get to the monasteries, and the journey took on the atmosphere of a pilgrimage.

Monasteries by the shore

Docheiariou has been known as a Serb monastery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

As we travelled along the coast, we passed a succession of bays and small harbours leading to inland monasteries that were not within sight. The port of Zographou leads inland to Zographou or Saint George the Zograf Monastery, founded by three Bulgarian monks from Ohrid in the late 9th or early 10th century.

This is still seen as a Bulgarian monastery and today it has about 15 monks. The monastery is named after a 13th or 14th century icon of Saint George, said to have mysteriously painted itself on the prepared board. A sceptical bishop is said to have tried to test the icon by touching it, but part of his finger stuck to the icon and had to be severed.

Docheiariou was the first monastery we saw on the coast on out journey. With its tall, 18th century defensive tower, it looks like a fortified castle. It was founded in the 10th century and is dedicated to the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. Since the late 15th century, this has been a Serb monastery, and today it is home to about 30 monks.

Xenophontos frequently suffered from pirate raids (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The second monastery was Xenophontos, founded in the 10th or 11th century by Saint Xenophon. As a monastery on the seashore, Xenophontos frequently suffered from pirate raids. The monastery fell into financial ruin but was re-established in the 18th century. The bell tower was built in 1864. Today the community has 30 monks.

Introducing the ‘Jesus Prayer’

The domes of Saint Panteleimon are a reminder of Russian influences (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Saint Panteleimon, also known as the Rousikon or Russian monastery, is mid-way along the west coast. This is the most eye-catching monastery on Mount Athos and the largest of the 20 monasteries. The expansive, grand multi-storey buildings, many of them abandoned, the green copper onion domes and the resounding bells testify to its rich and expansive past.

For centuries, Russian and Greek monks lived together in harmony in Panteleimon. The benefactors included Byzantine emperors, Serbian princes, wealthy Romanians, Greek merchant families in Constantinople and Russian tsars.

After a long absence, Russian monks began returning in the 19th century, and they monks numbered 1,000 in 1895. But in 1913, 800 monks were sent back to Russia, and the Russian Revolution in 1917 brought to an end the flow of Russian monks for most of the 20th century.

Two monks of the monastery – Saint Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938) and Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov (1896-1993) – were influential in introducing the practice of the Jesus Prayer to Western spirituality.

In 2005, President Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader to visit the monastery. Today, there are about 70 Russian and Ukrainian monks at Saint Panteleimon.

Xeropotamou, a classic example of Athonite architecture, stands on a conspicuous site 200 metres above sea level. This is one of the oldest Athonite monasteries, although its early history remains obscure and the exact date of its foundation and the identity of its founder are obscured in tradition and myth. One tradition says it was founded by the Empress Pulcheria in the fifth century.

The monastery flourished until the 13th century, and like the other monasteries it has had its periods of decline, including catastrophic fires and the burden of great debts.

Today, the monastery owns the port of Daphne and its treasures include two pieces of the True Cross. The monastery now has about 25 monks.

Daphne is a small settlement between Xeropotamou and Simonopetra with fewer than 40 residents. It serves as the port and entry point to Mount Athos, with daily ferries to and from Ouranoupolis.

Daring precipice

Simonopetra stands on the edge of a rocky range (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Monastery of Simonos Petra venerates Saint Mary Magdalene as one of its ‘co-founders,’ despite the prohibition on women visiting the mountain. Known more simply as Simonopetra, this is the most daring construction on Mount Athos, at a height of 330 metres on the end of a rocky mountain range. It was founded around 1257, but was destroyed by fires in 1570, 1622 and again in 1891.

Decades of decline were reversed in 1973, when a new 20-member brotherhood from the Meteora on the Greek mainland moved to the monastery, which now has a community of 50 monks.

Gregoriou is built on a sea-washed rock with balconies overlooking the gulf below, Patrick Comerford, Mount Athos, 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Monastery of Gregoriou is built on a sea-washed rock with balconies overlooking the gulf below. It was founded in the 14th century by Gregory, a Syrian monk from Mount Sinai. The monastery has about 70 monks today.

Dionysiou has a gilded sanctuary screen and frescoes depicting scenes from the Book of Revelation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Dionysiou or ‘Nea Petra,’ on the south-west tip of Mount Athos, stands on a narrow and steep rocky mass rising to a height of 80 metres above the sea. It is named after the founder, Saint Dionysius from Korysos near Kastoria.

Saint Niphon, Patriarch of Constantinople, was a monk of Dionysiou in the 15th century. The monastery’s wall paintings or frescoes, dating from around 1546, are the work of Tzortzis, an influential member of the Cretan School of Iconography. The gilded sanctuary screen and the wall-paintings of the Book of Revelation are the oldest complete portrayal of these scene in the Orthodox world. The treasures and relics include the right hand of Saint John the Baptist. The monastery has a community of around 50.

Saint Paul was endowed by the Serbian-born wife of the Sultan Murat II, who brought the gifts of the Three Wise Men (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The last monastery we reached was Saint Paul or Aghiou Pavlou, founded by Saint Paul of Xeropotamou, who also founded Xeropotamou. The monastery was deserted in the 14th century, but was restored by Serbian nobles, Byzantine emperors, Danubian princes and Romanian and Greek benefactors. Catastrophes in 20th century included a fire in 1902 and a flood in 1911.

The monastery’s oldest building, the chapel of Saint George, has frescoes painted by members of the Cretan School. The monastery treasures are said to include the gifts of the Three Wise Men, donated by the Serbian-born wife of the Sultan Murat II. She is said to be the only woman to have set foot on the shore at the monastery harbour. Other relics include the foot of Saint Gregory the Theologian, and a piece of the True Cross. The community consists of 30 monks.

Return to Ouranoupolis

Icons and religious goods made on Mount Athos on sale in Ouranoupolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

During our journey along the west coast of Mount Athos, we also saw a number of smaller houses that are dependencies of the larger monasteries, including Kelli Ayiou Modestou, Skiti Monoxilites, and Metochi Chourmitsis an outlying farm belonging to Panteleimon, where the once abandoned vineyards have been developed in recent years by the Tsantalis label, producing organic wines and spirits.

Tickets for ferry boats and speed boats to Mount Athos on sale in Ouranoupolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

We returned along the full length of the south-west coat of the Holy Mountain. In all, we had seen eight or nine of the 20 monasteries on Mount Athos.

Back in Ouranoupolis, after a late but lingering lunch, we explored the small shops along the seafront, selling icons and religious goods made by the monks in the monasteries. In one shop, a woman devoutly but proudly brought us to see the bread she had baked for the Eucharist the next day: Easter would dawn in the morning.

Bread for the Easter Liturgy prepared in Ouranoupolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A shop in Chania in Crete … one of the many shops throughout Greece selling icons and religious goods made on Mount Athos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Religious goods from Mount Athos in a shop in Ouranoupolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This feature was published in September 2018 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory)