wfn.org | Bishops get in-depth tour of Canterbury Cathedral

["Christopher Took" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC054 - 27 July 1998

by Nan Cobbey

Lambeth Conference Communications

"Maravillosa!" said Bishop Julio Holquin Khoury of the Dominican
Republic as he sat, catching his breath at Canterbury Cathedral
Sunday night.

"Our cathedral [in Santo Domingo], built 1528, was the first in
the New World. You can see 500 years. But here you can see 800,
eight centuries."

Bishop Khoury was one of 600 bishops and spouses who toured the
historic mother church of the Anglican Communion, some following
human guides, some carrying tape recorded explanations, others
reading from guidebooks.

The curious and fit climbed the 76 steps to the belltower
platform and watched volunteer bell ringers pull "the peal" of 14
bells in several different sequences. A guide explained that the
volunteers - 50 in Canterbury, 200 in Kent - are all members of
the Kent County Association of Change Ringers founded in 1880.

Group after group stood, awed, on the martyrdom transept before
the sculpture marking the place of St. Thomas Becket's murder.
"It's an extraordinary story, really," said Lt. Col. Dick Bolton,
a guide. Adaku Ihuoma Grace Iheagwam, wife of the Bishop of Egbu,
Nigeria, has never heard the account before. "I enjoyed hearing
about ... a bishop who stood on his principles for the church and
against the king," she said.

Everyone wandering through the 900-year-old cathedral heard
assistant organist Timothy Noon as he played and demonstrated the
organ console above the pulpitum screen. Only a few dozen were
able to actually visit his aery, escorted up in the small groups
of. Noon said people seemed "quite surprised at the number of
pipes - three and half thousand."  The largest, he told them, was
35-feet; the smallest "less than an inch."

Visitors wandered the chambers of the cathedral for several hours
watching stone carvers and candle-makers, talking to librarians
and repairers of vestments, hearing stories of archbishops and
pilgrims, learning of tombs and history before settling into
quiet for Compline and the ride home.

For further information, contact:

   Lambeth Conference Communications
   Canterbury Business School
   University of Kent at Canterbury
   Telephone: 01227 827348/9
   Fax: 01227 828085
   Mobile: 0374 800212

   http://www.lambethconference.org

All press releases are available from the Lambeth Conference web site at
www.lambethconference.org.

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Apologies for problems with LC050 and LC051.