RuthGledhill.com
'Ruth Gledhill may be regarded as a vixen by the establishment of the CofE but she is a very good journalist.' Colin Slee.
'Ruth Gledhill may be regarded as a vixen by the establishment of the CofE but she is a very good journalist.' Colin Slee.
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Page 23
September 2010.
A religion correspondent gets little sleep when a Pope comes to town. When I am not working through the night, I am lying awake, heart racing with anxiety. How can I keep up, how can I cope, what if I miss something, what if my recurring nightmare comes true and I actually do go and write: "Cardinal John Paul Newman" in The Times and no sub-editor picks it up?
On a typical day at the moment, work is interrupted with emails, letters and calls from readers. One accuses me of being an apologist for Catholicism and demand to know whether I am one. Another harangues me as if I am responsible for every single incident of anti-Catholic sentiment in all national newspapers and across all broadcast platforms, not just now but since the Reformation. Even since the Armada. And there is a third, the nicest by far, who simply wants tickets for Hyde Park on Saturday. This is a great story to cover but under the pressure, mistakes creep in.
I haven't yet mixed up Paul Newman with John Paul II and had made them a curious trinity of beatification with Cardinal Newman at Cofton Park, a mixture rivalling one of the late great actor's famous salad dressings, but in The Times this week, I do manage to award the Bishop of Croydon, Nick Baines, a doctorate. I have no idea how that happened as I know perfectly well he doesn't have one. He tweets me: 'Thanks for giving me a doctorate in the Times this morning! I didn't realise it was so easy!' I respond: 'It's a pleasure. When you become Archbishop of Canterbury, maybe you could give me a Lambeth degree in return!' He tweets back: 'Dream on! You've got to let this Cantuar thing go! (But I can probably arrange for you to get a badge from the Tufty Club.)' This is a reference to an ongoing intermedia dialogue between the Church of England and The Times. I keep putting him forward as a favourite to succeed Rowan Williams, he keeps complaining about the media on his blog. 'Today a doctorate, tomorrow Lambeth! We've got the power! Not,' I reply, writing as someone who does not even have a degree, let alone a Lambeth one, but merely an HND. But now it is on the record that he definitely has no doctorate, maybe Cauntuar is out of the question for young Nick after all. What a shame. I'll have to settle for my Blue Peter Badge, as I've managed to do all these years.
July 2010.
I joined The Times in 1987 and I remember at that time, covering train and plane crashes and murders and the addictions of the children of celebrities when their descent into drugs hell was not yet commonplace, how I longed to retreat into what felt like the peaceful, secluded ivory tower of religion reporting for The Times. My illusions were shattered pretty soon after being given this specialism in about 1990 and I am at present writing a chapter for a book, Religion in the News, when I will detail some of this. It soon became apparent that this was not a particularly 'nice' world I had entered into and the advent of the Internet has made it even less so. Hence the flowers. Taking pictures of pretty flowers in gardens helps me to sweeten the scent of what I do. It is my attempt to 'love bomb' my specialism into niceness. 'Bloom bombing,' my husband calls it. His poem, Immanence, which you can hear on this page, seems appropriate here given the topic, and that I am posting this on the eve of the launch of his new book at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.
This is the video I made in Rome and posted today on my blog at The Times. It is an interview with the Pope's spokesman Father Frederico Lombardi, who is confident the Pope will be welcomed warmly in Britain. The photo above was taken in the parched gardens of Villa Pamphili, also during my recent visit to rome.
I hope Father Lombardi is not destined to be disappointed. Richmond-upon-Thames is the most genteel little burb in England, but even this haven of parks and home to the Royal Ballet School and one of the poshest MPs in the land, saving David Cameron himself, is going to feel the heat next week when campaigners against the Pope's visit gather there for a meeting before his visit to Britain in September. In today's Times I report on the souvenirs going on sale before the visit. I think I better go and buy that £30 Swarovski bracelet quickly, just to add my own tuppence or so to the peace goodwill quota before the visit. The bracelet has the motto on it, Cor Ad Cor Loquitur, which was the motto of Cardinal Newman, being beatified during the visit, and is the motto for the visit itself. But of more interest to me is is that it was the motto first of St Francis de Sales, the Patron Saint of Journalists.
Here is a file of one of the sisters at the Monastery of the Visitation, which I visited recently and wrote about in the previous post on this site, reading from the saint's writings. St Francis de Sales was the co-founder of the order, with St Jane de Chantal, who he is writing to here. 'You have disguised your suffering very well, and need do no more than what you are already doing,' he says. When Alan's finished his poem, I recommend listening to this. Perhaps heart will indeed speak to heart, and we will have peace. Let us pray that this is so.
August 4, 2010
'Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.'
St Francis de Sales
A religion correspondent gets little sleep when a Pope comes to town. When I am not working through the night, I am lying awake, heart racing with anxiety. How can I keep up, how can I cope, what if I miss something, what if my recurring nightmare comes true and I actually do go and write: "Cardinal John Paul Newman" in The Times and no sub-editor picks it up?
On a typical day at the moment, work is interrupted with emails, letters and calls from readers. One accuses me of being an apologist for Catholicism and demand to know whether I am one. Another harangues me as if I am responsible for every single incident of anti-Catholic sentiment in all national newspapers and across all broadcast platforms, not just now but since the Reformation. Even since the Armada. And there is a third, the nicest by far, who simply wants tickets for Hyde Park on Saturday. This is a great story to cover but under the pressure, mistakes creep in.
I haven't yet mixed up Paul Newman with John Paul II and had made them a curious trinity of beatification with Cardinal Newman at Cofton Park, a mixture rivalling one of the late great actor's famous salad dressings, but in The Times this week, I do manage to award the Bishop of Croydon, Nick Baines, a doctorate. I have no idea how that happened as I know perfectly well he doesn't have one. He tweets me: 'Thanks for giving me a doctorate in the Times this morning! I didn't realise it was so easy!' I respond: 'It's a pleasure. When you become Archbishop of Canterbury, maybe you could give me a Lambeth degree in return!' He tweets back: 'Dream on! You've got to let this Cantuar thing go! (But I can probably arrange for you to get a badge from the Tufty Club.)' This is a reference to an ongoing intermedia dialogue between the Church of England and The Times. I keep putting him forward as a favourite to succeed Rowan Williams, he keeps complaining about the media on his blog. 'Today a doctorate, tomorrow Lambeth! We've got the power! Not,' I reply, writing as someone who does not even have a degree, let alone a Lambeth one, but merely an HND. But now it is on the record that he definitely has no doctorate, maybe Cauntuar is out of the question for young Nick after all. What a shame. I'll have to settle for my Blue Peter Badge, as I've managed to do all these years.
July 2010.
I joined The Times in 1987 and I remember at that time, covering train and plane crashes and murders and the addictions of the children of celebrities when their descent into drugs hell was not yet commonplace, how I longed to retreat into what felt like the peaceful, secluded ivory tower of religion reporting for The Times. My illusions were shattered pretty soon after being given this specialism in about 1990 and I am at present writing a chapter for a book, Religion in the News, when I will detail some of this. It soon became apparent that this was not a particularly 'nice' world I had entered into and the advent of the Internet has made it even less so. Hence the flowers. Taking pictures of pretty flowers in gardens helps me to sweeten the scent of what I do. It is my attempt to 'love bomb' my specialism into niceness. 'Bloom bombing,' my husband calls it. His poem, Immanence, which you can hear on this page, seems appropriate here given the topic, and that I am posting this on the eve of the launch of his new book at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.
This is the video I made in Rome and posted today on my blog at The Times. It is an interview with the Pope's spokesman Father Frederico Lombardi, who is confident the Pope will be welcomed warmly in Britain. The photo above was taken in the parched gardens of Villa Pamphili, also during my recent visit to rome.
I hope Father Lombardi is not destined to be disappointed. Richmond-upon-Thames is the most genteel little burb in England, but even this haven of parks and home to the Royal Ballet School and one of the poshest MPs in the land, saving David Cameron himself, is going to feel the heat next week when campaigners against the Pope's visit gather there for a meeting before his visit to Britain in September. In today's Times I report on the souvenirs going on sale before the visit. I think I better go and buy that £30 Swarovski bracelet quickly, just to add my own tuppence or so to the peace goodwill quota before the visit. The bracelet has the motto on it, Cor Ad Cor Loquitur, which was the motto of Cardinal Newman, being beatified during the visit, and is the motto for the visit itself. But of more interest to me is is that it was the motto first of St Francis de Sales, the Patron Saint of Journalists.
Here is a file of one of the sisters at the Monastery of the Visitation, which I visited recently and wrote about in the previous post on this site, reading from the saint's writings. St Francis de Sales was the co-founder of the order, with St Jane de Chantal, who he is writing to here. 'You have disguised your suffering very well, and need do no more than what you are already doing,' he says. When Alan's finished his poem, I recommend listening to this. Perhaps heart will indeed speak to heart, and we will have peace. Let us pray that this is so.
August 4, 2010
'Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.'
St Francis de Sales
