The ivory handle of a crozier used by St Pope Gregory I will go on display at Canterbury Cathedral this weekend.
The staff, used by the pope who helped to establish Christianity in England during the 6th century, was flown from Rome to the cathedral a week ago under tight security restrictions.
It arrived just as 38 Anglican Primates gathered in the cathedral town for a meeting of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Church of England officials said the relic was a gesture of support for the meeting. Pope Gregory appointed St Augustine of Canterbury, then the prior of a monastery in Rome, to lead a mission to evangelise Britain in 595.
Dr Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, said: “We are very pleased to receive the crozier as a symbol of ecumenical encouragement at this time of the meeting of Anglican Primates, and as a link with St Gregory whose vision of the conversion of England caused Augustine to found the community at Canterbury.”
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who authorised the loan, said the “highly symbolic” relic, venerated by Anglicans, was a “mark of the bond that spiritually unites the Catholic and Anglican churches”.
The loan of the relic, insured at £250,000, was organised by Fr Robert McCulloch, an Australian Catholic priest involved in the Vatican’s cricket team, and the Rev Marcus Walker, director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.
Mr Walker told the Times newspaper: “The insurers have insisted that the box has its own seat in business class.”
Prince makes donation to help persecuted Christians
The Prince of Wales has made a donation in aid of suffering Christians in the Middle East.
The undisclosed gift from Prince Charles’s charitable foundation was made to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) and came after the Prince made a speech about persecuted Christians at an advent reception hosted by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, in London last month.
In his address to invited guests including Church leaders and Middle East Christians, he said that the growing crisis of extremism could threaten “the very existence of Christianity in the land of its birth”.
At the event the Prince met Iraqi and Syrian Christians with direct experience of persecution. Last month ACN announced a series of extra emergency aid for people in the Middle East, including 30 new projects in some of the worst affected areas. The charity provided showers, washbasins and toilets for displaced Christians in Erbil, Kurdish northern Iraq, and a nursery school for 125 toddlers. It also gave emergency aid for 182 Christian families seeking sanctuary in Kirkuk and Sulaimanya.
Wreath laid at Stuart heir’s tomb
Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See, Nigel Baker, has laid a wreath at the tomb of the Old Pretender, a Stuart heir who tried to win back the British Crown. The ceremony, at St Peter’s Basilica, marked the 250th anniversary of the funeral of James Francis Edward Stuart, son of King James II.
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