As the latest Pew Research census has shown that the Catholic Church is haemorrhaging people to Pentecostalism in South America, it has to provoke us to think more about the Church and the Holy Spirit. I found myself reflecting on an unusual and personal apparition that became known, in the charismatic circles of a group of astonished Protestants, as “Our Lady of East Mosely”. It seemed to me it might be more theologically important than I had thought it to be at the time.
Canon Tom Smail was once the star research student of the 20th century’s most famous Protestant theologian, Karl Barth. Smail founded the renewal organisation called the “Fountain Trust” as the charismatic movement erupted. He was that very rare thing: a man of high intelligence who was vulnerable enough to Christ to be graced by the Holy Spirit. He received an apparition of Our Lady, early one morning when he was living in East Mosely, Surrey, and leading this Pentecostal renewal organisation.
