Cardinal preaches at Selby Abbey

ARDINAL Basil Hume made history yesterday when he preached at a special service in Selby Abbey, Yorkshire, attended by Catholics and Anglicans from all over the area.
It was the first time that a cardinal had been into the abbey in its 910-year history, as well as the first time that an Archbishop of Westminster had been there.
Cardinal Hume is in Yorkshire to attend a rally to celebrate the centenary of the Leeds diocese. The rally will be at Ampleforth tomorrow and will be celebrated jointly with the Middlesbrough diocese.
Cardinal Hume's presence at Selby, together with a number of monks from Ampleforth who sang Solemn Vespers at the service, underlined the abbey's links with the Benedictines. Founded in 1069 it was a Benedictine monastery until all religious orders were disbanded in England in the Reformation of the 16th century.
It now serves as thy parish church for Selby and is the only medieval abbe) in Yorkshire which is still intact and in regular use for worship.
The idea for the service sprang mainly from Canon Anthony Smith, vicar of Selby and an old friend of the Ampleforth community.
He said this week: "I am expecting this to he a great example of a common act of worship involving Anglicans and Catholics in an abbey which means so much to both of us. I hope it will be a great demonstration of AnglicanCatholic friendship building on personal links between many of the people involved."
Bishop Gordon Wheeler of Leeds; Dr Stuart Blanch, Anglican Archbishop of York and the Anglican bishops of Hull and Whitby, will also take part.
• Dr Clifford Barker, the Anglican Bishop of Whitby, has urged Christians in the York archdiocese to study carefully the report of the international ecumenical team which spent a month in the area recently. There were two Catholics on the team.
The team's report gave "little of comfort" and said that its members found Christians there to be lacking in confidence in the power of the Gospel, Dr Barker said. But it was a challenge to renewal in the Church. "It won't be comfortable, but it will be exciting." he said.