Growth and hope
Sir – It is true that the Church’s traditional centre of gravity is shifting, as John Allen noted in the June edition, but this is nothing new. As the summer approaches, memories of two Assumption Masses spring to mind from the last couple of decades. Neither congregation was what would now be called “diverse” – the first was in a hill village not far from Siena in Italy and the second was just outside Llandovery in Wales. The old missionary boot seemed to be firmly on the other foot: the Italian congregation was ministered to by an African, and the Welsh congregation by a Filipino. Meanwhile (in the light of your Rome Special Report last month), think of the faces of the young nuns that one sees on the streets of Rome. In my own experience they seem to be mainly African and Asian – and where there are nuns praying for vocations, there are vocations.
