176. 369th Clergy Support Trust Festival Service, St Paul's Cathedral, 7 May 2024

The Livery has supported the welfare of clergy and their families for almost 400 years. It started with a choral festival to raise funds. The Festival Service at St Paul's Cathedral is an amazing occasion with a grand turn out of Livery Masters, City and Church leaders. The frustration is that taking pictures of this spectacle in the impressive setting is discouraged. (These pictures are from the Rochester Cathedral Choir website so I am sure that they are approved!)

This year the choir of St Paul's was supported by the Cathedral Choirs from Rochester and Durham. They sang together and separately, their voices filling and resonating round the Cathedral. The music came from 400 years of praise from the 17th to the 21st centuries, by Gabrieli, Parry, Elgar, Stanford and Cecilia McDowall. I was encouraged to see that all the choirs appeared to be mixed, including the best voices irrespective of gender.

The Sermon was given by the Archbishop of Wales and Bishop of Bangor (the same person!) who started with reference to the Barbie film. His comparison between the plastic artificial world and the reality was very powerful.  We have to live with the reality even though sometimes we desperately seek an idealistic imaginary world.  The clergy particularly have to manage this with our high demands and expectations of them when they experience the same pressures as the rest of us.  With limited free time and finances they suffer more.

After the service we walked up to the Plaisterers’ Hall for dinner.

In his speech at the Festival Dinner, the Chief Executive of the Trust, the Revd Ben Cahill-Nicholls shared how they are expecting a £6 million deficit this year and how they are helping in individual cases.

It is often a bit of a gamble at a dinner of a large diverse group when you are allocated a place as to who you are you going to end up sitting next to. On this occasion I won the jackpot. On one side I had the Master Poulter and we spent ages talking about farming, the pressures on the industry, the environmental impact and the way forward. On the other side I had the Archbishop of Wales who is a committed environmentalist, which is consistant with his Christian principles.  He is organising a conference on water in the Autumn in Cardiff on the rejuvenation of Welsh Rivers. He has water companies, regulators, farmers and public groups all participating and has invited the Water Conservators to join him. The three of us had some interesting discussions about the Wye Valley and the impact of intensive poultry production.

It was one of those amazing and unexpected evenings. My thanks to the Clergy Support Trust for their good work and organisation.