I wish I could have painted...

...the extraordinary scene at Oscott, with young people streaming out of the chapel and waiting quietly on the wide green lawn as, dotted all around, priests (and bishops) quietly heard confessions, seated along the terrace or in the big marquee. Apart from World Youth Day in Madrid - where there were similar scenes at the big Festival of Forgiveness beneath the trees in the city's central park - I have never seen anything quite like it. And if John Henry Newman had wandered along, he would indeed have seen something of an early English rain-sprinkled summer following his "Second Spring". He once wrote about an English summer - in the context of writing about honouring Mary in May - and noted that it was often chill and damp, and yet that it holds the promise of warmth and fruitfulness...