Did you know that the cathedral of the Archbishop of Southwark, who has jurisdiction over the part of Greater London which lies south of the Thames, is slightly further north than that of the Archbishop of Westminster, who has the souls of the rest? This is the sort of information that will no doubt help with pub quizzes all over the world, for which you’re welcome.
Opened in 1848, and designed by AWN Pugin, St George’s was raised to cathedral status in 1852, in the wake of the restoration of the English Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal Wiseman’s not-entirely helpful pastoral letter “From Without the Flaminian Gate”, and the petulant response of the Anglican establishment, the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill of 1851.
A foolish piece of sectarian flummery and a dead letter from the start, it was repealed by Gladstone 20 years later. Nevertheless the bishops were punctilious about observing its strictures while they lasted: that it was a criminal offence for any body save the Church of England to use for its titles of designation “any city, town or place, or of any territory or district (under any designation or description whatsoever), in the United Kingdom”.
And so it is that St George’s Cathedral is universally known as just that – pace our editorial of July 1958. Just as well, since the Anglican church of St Saviour & St Mary Overie nearby was itself made a cathedral in 1905, and two Southwark Cathedrals would have seemed confusing. The Catholic see was raised to archdiocesan status by Paul VI in 1965, when St George’s became a metropolitan church in the ecclesiastical sense as well.
The original church was one of Pugin’s finest, although his original plans had to be altered on grounds of cost and the proposed tower and spire were never built. I say “original” and “was”, because on the night of April 16, 1941, in the depth of the Second World War, St George’s was struck by a German incendiary, which lodged in the roof. By the next morning the ensuing conflagration had reduced the magnificent building to a shell.
Evocative photographs demonstrate the painful extent of the devastation. That the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was spared, however, provided comfort and inspiration for the future – and Archbishop Peter Amigo set to work. The debris was cleared and the walls stabilised; over the next few years services carried on almost as usual, without a roof.
Amigo died in 1949, having been bishop of the diocese since 1904; it therefore fell to his successor, Archbishop Cyril Cowderoy, to continue the work. The distinguished Anglican architect Romilly Craze was drafted in; a Royal Academician, he expressed his frustration in our own pages that his work was regarded as “a resurrected Pugin masterpiece” when all he had done was to integrate three surviving chapels into his new and original scheme.
As the distinguished Catholic architect Anthony Delarue observed to me after the 175th-anniversary Mass on July 4, “It’s so 1950s”. True, but it also has a timelessness to it; even in the relatively short life of the new building it is a space in which prayer has been valid. Craze had never built a Catholic church before, but as we noted in July 1958, “In the spirit of medieval cathedral builders he remarked: ‘I have done this for the greater glory of God.’”
Human help came from perhaps unlikely quarters. Andrew Cusack, better known in these pages for his work in Parliament, but who is a regular worshipper at St George’s and who carried the metropolitan cross in the great procession in and out of the Mass of thanksgiving, reminded me that among the individual donors to the rebuilding campaign had been Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Surely the cathedral’s crowning glory came in May 1982, when Pope John Paul II visited to pray, preach and take part in the Anointing of the Sick. On that occasion he counselled the whole nation: “Do not neglect your sick and elderly.”
“The wisdom of Christ and the power of Christ are to be seen in the weakness of those who share his sufferings,” he insisted, just over a year after he had been shot and grievously wounded in St Peter’s Square.
Papal links remain strong. At the end of the great thanksgiving Mass Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendía, the nuncio to the Court of St James’s, vested in cope and mitre, imparted on behalf of Pope Francis the apostolic blessing with its associated plenary indulgence. “Per intercessionem beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, benedicat vos omnipotens Deus…” he intoned, with distinct Iberian flavour. A solidly English “Amen” thundered back at the end.
The nuncio was not the last prelate to sing that evening. In the course of a splendid knees-up afterwards in the cathedral hall – and on his birthday, too – Archbishop John Wilson joined a line of parishioners who had commandeered the microphone. “I don’t want to set the world on fire,” he crooned, channelling the Ink Spots. “I’ve lost all ambition for worldly acclaim; I just want to be the one you love.” That may well be so – and he is clearly held in high affection at Southwark – but the word on the street is that the names for Westminster are already being considered at Rome.
THOSE who have had a chance of paying a visit to the resurrected Southwark Cathedral — and visitors to London should by no means miss it, however short and fully-charged their stay – will certainly feel that not only is it an architectural masterpiece in Gothic adapted to our age and taste, but that, standing in a somewhat dismal quarter of London, it is a wonderfully contrasting symbol of the serenity and permanence of that other and higher side of human life; man’s supernatural link with the beauty and love of God. The fact that it is a resurrection of that which the sin and stupidity of man destroyed in the terrible wars of our era of so-called emancipation only adds point to the ever-active renewal within men of the life of grace wherein alone lies hope…
A CATHEDRAL is a different thing from a parish church or a chapel. In it we expect that the very stones themselves should continuously sing and praise the glory of God to the world outside. In this country, especially with the glorious Gothic of the Cathedrals which our forefathers built to stand for a posterity which they thought to remain ever Catholic in communion with the See of Peter, Southwark Cathedral seems, with its sweeping, unfussy lines, to echo in a contemporary Gothic idiom their own lost song. It is possible to fall for a modernistic snobbery and to condemn beauty simply because it harks back to the past when the contemporary alternative may find itself quickly condemned a generation or two ahead for the ugliness which it is considered unfashionable to point out at present. For our part we feel that our descendants, as they pray within the interior of Southwark Cathedral, will remember with gratitude the decisions of the present Bishop of Southwark and the brilliance of those who worked for him…
THE CHURCH’s first priority must always be the spiritual and pastoral care of souls, for the Mystical Body of Christ is composed of the men, women and children in whom Christ dwells. The Church is the channel of Christ’s life-giving grace, of the Spirit’s continuous inspiration. It is necessary therefore for the Church to provide the human means of worship, the administration of the sacraments, the teaching, the armoury of defence of the truth in an unbelieving world, and constantly to adapt all these to the ever-changing condition of life and customs of the people of God. All this, in our times, costs great sums of money. All the more thankful therefore should we be when vision and circumstances permit of the erection of those great and permanent witnesses in stone to the glory of God and the faith of His people. Such a monument is the new Southwark Cathedral.
By Andrew Cusack.
When Fr Thomas Doyle, the priest in charge of the London Road chapel in 1820s Southwark, originally conceived the idea of building the first great Catholic church in London since the Reformation to replace his humble, crowded, and perpetually underfunded premises, his contemporaries must have thought him slightly mad. A prodigious if sometimes difficult man, Provost Doyle would have been pleased to see the Metropolitan Cathedral of St George reach the 175th anniversary of its first opening this year. A whole week of festivities marked the occasion.
They began on Monday July 3 with two lectures exploring the history of the great church from myself and Melanie Bunch, the Cathedral archivist. I explored the deep history of Southwark and the surrounding area, focusing on the three themes that inextricably intertwine whenever you delve into the long history of this part of London since Roman times: piety, travel and merry-making. Melanie dealt out some myth-busting about the narratives linking the foundation of St George’s to the penal times, as well as investigating some of the curious goings-on during the Gordon Riots.
The great crescendo of the week was the anniversary of the opening it- self on Tuesday July 4 when the Archbishop of Southwark offered a beautiful solemn Mass at the high altar. The Apostolic Nuncio assisted by blessing a new shrine of St John the Evangelist, brought from the closed seminary at Wonersh, as well as an icon of Our Lady, Queen of Palestine, commissioned by the Order of the Holy Sepulchre who have long made St George’s their priory church in England. The Mass included newly commissioned music in the form of an offertory motet by cathedral organist Frederick Stocken, based on words from St John Paul II’s 1982 homily at St George’s, and ended with an indulgenced pontifical blessing from the Apostolic Nuncio. It was followed by a generous and free knees-up for all comers in the Amigo Hall, including plentiful hot and cold food and much fruit of the vine. As it was also the Archbishop’s own dies natalis, it included a loud chorus of “Happy Birthday” as well.
One of Archbishop Wilson’s cleverest coups has been to lure the Norbertine priory which had previously dwelt in insufficient quarters in Chelmsford to the empty former Capuchin friary in Peckham. Since then on a few occasions a Premonstratensian or two have been known to assist with events at St George’s, and on Wednesday July 5 Fr Pius Collins OPræm came to give a prayerful reflection on the cathedral’s patron saint after the morning Mass, which proved particularly popular with the parishioners.
On Thursday July 6 it was the turn of the Polish Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Dr Piotr Wilczek, who in addition to being a diplomat is a distinguished literary academic and intellectual historian. His Excellency spoke on the legacy of the most famous of his fellow countrymen, Pope St John Paul II. No pontiff for centuries has changed the course of temporal world events quite so influentially himself, but Dr Wilczek pointed out that St John Paul had his eyes firmly focused on the spiritual. He also examined how the late pope’s three visits to Poland helped bring down Communism there.
St John Paul II is the only reigning pontiff to have called upon our cathedral in person and has left an architectural legacy in the memorial window commemorating his visit in May 1982. As the Ambassador’s talk was ongoing, the great Forty Hours devotion had already commenced in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the cathedral – which Romilly Craze deftly interwove into his postwar rebuilding as the building rose from the ashes after the destruction wrought by the King’s enemies during the Blitz.
Architecture was the subject for the final event of the week: a talk on Friday July 7 by Jonathan Louth, the current cathedral architect, about the planned (yet unbuilt) spires of St George’s down the years. He ably linked the spiritual aspiration of mountains, heights and ascent to the very purpose of a church tower or spire: to give glory to Almighty God. How sublime it would be if we could complete the tower of St George’s before the next major anniversary comes around in 2048. Best start saving now.
All Christians are commissioned to fulfil the apostolic inheritance that they receive in baptism, teaches Archbishop John Wilson.
This Cathedral Church of St George is not just a South London landmark. This cathedral is not merely a fine historic building designed by the great Augustus Welby Pugin. This cathedral is not significant solely for its remarkable stained glass windows at its east and west ends. No. Above everything else, our beautiful cathedral is a signpost to heaven. This is why it was built and its mission remains the same today. Our cathedral bears witness to divine love as a beacon of divine mercy.
More than 900 years before the Lord Jesus was born, King Solomon built a temple to house the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark contained the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses. At the temple’s dedication, Solomon’s prayer questioned whether God’s greatness could be confined in a building: “Will God really live with men and women on the earth?” he asked. “The heavens cannot contain you … how much less this house that I have built!”
Our cathedral’s grandeur points beyond itself to Almighty God. It puts the spotlight on the Holy Trinity, calling us to the inner life and love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our cathedral evangelises by existing. It preaches by its permanence. Despite wartime bombing and fire, for 175 years our cathedral has sounded a fanfare in stone to Christ’s resurrection: Christ, who is the foundation on which these walls stand. This sacred place breathes because Christ is alive. Here we draw life from the well-spring of salvation; each one of us a living stone, together making a spiritual house.
It goes without saying that no church, no matter how magnificent, can ever confine God’s presence. The astonishing truth, however, is that this cathedral gives God’s presence a home. Its fabric declares that God matters, that God alone is to be worshipped and adored. Our cathedral’s bricks and mortar invite us to encounter Christ personally in prayer and through the sacraments. We are summoned to the altar where Holy Mass makes present Christ’s sacrifice, offered once for all on the cross, from which we receive his living and life-giving Body and Blood.
Here there is a house within a house, where our Lord and God dwells among us in the tabernacle. Really and truly the Lord Jesus abides with us in the Blessed Sacrament.
Over the years, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people have entered our cathedral yearning for meaning and forgiveness and longing for holiness and hope. Whatever our state of heart or stage of life, whatever our level of faith or individual struggle, our Eucharistic Lord pitches his tent in our midst – and “one day within his courts is better than a thousand elsewhere”.
Looking back to 1848, we might forget the courage required to conceive and build this cathedral. English Catholicism was still emerging from the long shadows of the Reformation. It would be another two years before Catholic dioceses were re-established. European revolutions raged across the Channel, generating fears for security and stability. Things were far from settled. When the hierarchy of English dioceses was restored by Pope Pius IX in 1850, an image of Cardinal Wiseman was carried through the streets of London and burned on Bethnal Green.
Faced with mid-19th century uncertainty and hostility, it was faith – holy faith, real and intense Catholic faith – which revitalised the apostolic conviction of our forebears. John Henry Newman – the Catholic convert, priest, cardinal and now saint – spoke famously in 1852 of a “Second Spring”, of the rebirth of Catholicism in England.
Today, we too look for renewal – for new signs of spring. Structures and programmes take us so far, but they are not the answer. Only joyful faith, rediscovered and rekindled, can remedy decline in the Church. Only the faith of disciples – of laity, clergy and religious – which overflows in love, can win souls for Christ. A new springtime in the Church begins with a new springtime in our hearts, refashioned by Christ’s love and ablaze with a passion for mission.
GK Chesterton once wrote that: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” The Lord Jesus foretold that the temple would be destroyed and raised up again in three days. He wasn’t speaking about the edifice of the temple building, which dominated Jerusalem and had taken decades to build. He was speaking about himself, about his body, and about his resurrection.
We believe in the power released forever when Christ conquered sin and death. This is the reason we never ever despair. We believe in Christ’s victory for ourselves, and we believe in Christ’s victory for our Church and for the world. Beautiful and necessary as our cathedral is, these bricks are not the Body of Christ. We are. You are. “Do you not realise”, writes St Paul, “that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God is living among you?”
As the saying goes, the Church only has one Saviour. It’s not you, and it’s not me. When the Lord Jesus cleared the traders from the temple, he declared it to be his Father’s house. Our cathedral too is the Father’s house; but so must our hearts be, where the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit make their home within us. This is what happened to the first apostles. From hearts totally in love with God, and utterly captivated by Christ, the apostles announced the saving message of conversion and discipleship. With confidence, they shaped the early Church for worship, mission and service.
My brothers and sisters, through baptism we are all commissioned to fulfil our apostolic inheritance. When we preach the Gospel with our lives, when Christ’s love overflows from us to others, a new springtime blossoms in the Church. Let us all, heart and soul, ring out our joy to the living God. Amen.
This homily was delivered by the Archbishop of Southwark at the Mass of Thanksgiving in St George’s Cathedral on the evening of July 4, 2023.
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