St Alban's: Prayers at the Peace Pillar

Parishioners from Ss Alban and Stephen Church held a joint service with the St Albans' Abbey community, and representatives of other churches and of Pax Christi, in Sumpter Yard at St Albans Abbey (Cathedral) on Sunday 4 August. This is an annual event which takes place on the Sunday closest to 6 August, when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. 6 August is also the Feast of the Transfiguration. This year the Pillar was relocated to a new site at the Abbey and to mark this change, the service started with a blessing of the Pillar in it's new site.

Pupils from Loreto College produced Origami Peace Cranes which were distributed at all Masses in Ss Alban and Stephen Church at the weekend and were also distributed to those attending the service.

The vigil is always conducted at the Peace Pillar which is a gift from the people of Japan to the Cathedral. It was given in 1982 to commemorate the decision of Dean Cuthbert Thicknesse to refuse to allow the Abbey bells to be rung to celebrate the end of the War in the East. At the time the Guardian reported the Dean's decision, as explained at a council meeting on 14th August 1945, as follows: "After the dean, who is the mayor's chaplain, had opened the council meeting with prayer, he made a statement to the council. "Let it not be supposed," he said, "that any of us withhold our due sense of gratitude for the mighty deliverance."

The events of the last ten days had given cause for deep searchings of heart to many people. "The decision to use the atomic bomb was made by the leaders of the democratic nations. We are all, therefore, though without our consent, implicated in that act. I do not hold a service of thanksgiving in St. Albans because I cannot honestly give thanks to God for an event brought about by a wrong use of force, by an act of wholesale, indiscriminate massacre which is different in kind from all the acts of open warfare hitherto, however brutal and hideous."

LINK

St Alban's Cathedral: www.stalbanscathedral.org/