Saturday Sept 30th
Westminster Cathedral Hall simply packed for a wonderful and inspiring conference organised by Aid to the Church in Need. Cardinal Zen spoke about China, and emphasised that the overwhelming feeling among Catholics there is one of loyalty to Rome: "And the Chinese are patient people", ie they are prepared to wait and wait, until eventually the Party's power and attempts to control over Catholicism crumble and the Church prevails.......we also heard from ACN staffer John Pontifex about his trip to Pakistan: this was during the "Danish cartoons" riots and two churches were torched and another (which he was visiting at the time) surrounded by a mob. Father Martin Edwards, our ACN chaplain, spoke brilliantly about the Holy Father's encyclical Deus Caritas Est, which can really be a sort of manifesto for the work of charities such as ACN. The message is one we need in Catholic charitable work: that we are not political, that all we do must be grounded in love, and driven by our relationship with Jesus Christ. ACN's fabulous collection of Christmas cards, Advent calendars, enchanting Christmas cribs and tree-decorations from the Holy Land, and more, were on sale. And how good it was to be part of a great hall full of people praying the Angelus together - one forgets what a great deep roar of sound it makes when a LOT of people all pray aloud......

In between the sessions, the Board of ACN gave Cardinal Zen and various other guests lunch, very suitably at the "Cardinal" pub. We had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding so the Cardinal certainly knew he was in Britain.....

Cardinal Zen will be on the BBC Radio 4 "Sunday" programme tomorrow morning, and preaching at the 11 am Mass at Brompton Oratory, and celebrating Mass for London's Chinese community at 2.30pm at St Patrick's, Soho Square.