A scoop for Stokesley parish – John Battle, practising Catholic, formerly MP for Leeds West, had a packed Cathedral Hall enthused and inspired by his ideas for ‘Building Community’ (he had also been the keynote speaker at the final session of the Bishop’s Lenten course on ‘Caritas in Veritate’).

At the Cathedral, he drew analogies with the solidarity surrounding the resurrection of the Chilean miners: witnesses of Hope; a news story that had the whole world involved in the culture of life. This was true Good News, a sharp contrast with the usual violence and greed which preoccupies our media. Much to the surprise of that same world media, the miners’ first act was prayer, thanksgiving to God for their survival.

John Battle then described an area in his Leeds constituency where 26 languages are spoken and where there is a ‘great churning of people’. Its problems come from poverty, and the consequences of the closure of two psychiatric hospitals, not to mention Armley Jail at its centre. ‘All the nation’s tensions are in my neighbourhood’ he proclaimed. Yet he believes the biggest issue for his constituents was ‘relationships’: young people lacking support, abandoning short term relationships which often involve children; the isolation of the old; immigrants without connections.

The children he talks to in schools know more about the TV programme ‘Neighbours’ than they do about their own neighbourhood. ‘Do you know your neighbours? The folk in your street?’ he challenged us. He quoted Albert Nolan OP: ‘Any idea of loving one another without sharing is an illusion’. The whole of Catholic Social Teaching has the Poor at the heart of it, so John Battle left us with the challenging question ‘What are we, as individuals and as parishes, doing about them?’

Margaret Blatchford