PHOTO: ALAMY, JOERG BOETHLING

A refugee camp in Juba, South Sudan, where Sudanese bishops met to demand an end to civil war 24

COLUMNS

Christopher Howse’s Notebook ‘My new mop came from a chain hardware shop with stocks of baffling light bulbs’ / 5

Anne Booth ‘As a Catholic, I have been brought up to pray, to talk to and listen to God’ / 11

REGULARS Word from the Cloisters 15 Puzzles 15 Letters 16 The Living Spirit 17

CONTENTS 3 AUGUST 2024 // VOL. 278 NO. 9564

FEATURES

4 / The pride of Wigan

Catholics in Wigan are fighting plans to close a historic church, amid dismay that a

lifeline offered by a traditionalist group has been rejected / BY ELENA CURTI

7 / Who’s afraid of a pot-bellied smurf? The real sin of the parody of Michelangelo’s Last Supper in the opening ceremony

of the Paris Olympics was not mockery but banality / BY JACOB PHILLIPS

8 / Strait is the gate

A divorced Anglican who sought to be married in the Catholic Church was saddened to find the process less than straightforward / BY JEREMY TREGLOWN

10 / Where Frodo meets Francis The fourth in our summer series of pilgrimages takes us to Spain, where God speaks through nature on a Lord of the Rings camino / BY BESS TWISTON DAVIES

13 / Mother Teresa’s twin pillar Little-known outside the community in Kolkata, Sr Frederick, who died in May aged 107, was one of the most influential British Catholics of her era / BY TOM HINEY

NEWS

24 / The Church in the World / News briefing 25 / Paris ceremony offends Christians around world

27 / View from Rome 28 / News from Britain and Ireland / News briefing

29 / Assisted dying bill introduced in the Lords

COVER: ALAMY, ANDRIY POPOV

ARTS / PAGE 18 Summer treats Joanna Moorhead, Mark Lawson, Lucy Lethbridge, D.J. Taylor and Benjamin Poore recommend the best forthcoming theatre, films, concerts, television and radio

BOOKS / PAGE 21

Christopher Bray The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies ANDY BECKETT Ian Bradley Passion Partners: The Piety of George Mackay Brown & Gerard Manley Hopkins ALISON GRAY Theo Hobson Generous Faith: Creating Vibrant Christian Communities GILES GODDARD Noonie Minogue In Pursuit of Love: The Search for Victor Hugo’s Daughter MARK BOSTRIDGE

For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit www.thetablet.co.uk

3 AUGUST 2024 | THE TABLET | 3