Young people...

..at a  Sunday evening Mass in the MUCH TOO SMALL chapel of the  Catholic chaplaincy at the University of Bristol: this needs to be expanded  expand it, and this could be done by knocking down the outer wall and extending it further forward...

I had already been to Mass in London that morning, so thought I would just slip in at the back of the chaplaincy  - no chance. Not a spare place anywhere...eventually I squeezed in, very much struck by the atmosphere of devotion.

Afterwards, a cheery gathering in a similarly overcrowded room for supper -  platefuls of vegetable curry, all cooked and served by the students - and then upstairs for the Cathsoc meeting, at which I was to speak on St John Paul the Great.

Just the sort of evening any guest speaker would relish - great atmosphere, lots of  young people filling sofas and armchairds and extra chairs carried up from below. Well organised but no formality - I sat comfortably on a large solid table and told the story, the wonderful story, of one of the greatest men of our era, a Saint with a great and powerful message for this new century.

It was a strange, but rather touching, thing to realise that in describing adventures in Communist-era Poland (addresses of contacts pinned inside my clothes, careful reminders about conversatons being taped, booklets and materials from London handed over  after a coded exchange of greetings) I was telling about history...but then as I talked about World Youth Day and the Theology of the Body, it was all about now, and about hope for the future.  Several of the audience will be off to World Youth Day, and an even larger number to the TOB series in London in Jan...

A happy evening, and then later there were mugs of tea in the kitchen, and more talk, and ideas about future Cathsoc speakers and meetings, and then finally a retirement to a comfortable room, ready for an early start the next day  as I was off on a family visit to a beloved elderly relative...