Starting with the Pope in Saint Anne’s Cathedral and ending with the Archbishop of Canterbury in Saint Peter’s Cathedral, the 4 corners festival this year shifted people around the city.

In the process, it gave people an opportunity to experience different thoughts and places. Some of the locations were churches, others like the Opera house and Titanic Hotel brought the story out of the churches and into the mainstream.

The Pope was talking in his video message about the important of 'Fiesta', of spending time celebrating and coming together to talk and walk together. “When we separate ourselves from each other we excommunicate each other,” he said.

Gladys Ganiel remembered being in a Christian Unity event in the Cathedral in the 80’s which created a demonstration outside but here in 2022 the Pope was delivering a video message and Fr Martin Magill was addressing the audience. Also at the pulpit was Austen Ivereigh, the Pope's biographer who had inspired the Rev Steve Stockman of Fitzroy Presbyterian, one of the founders of the festival, with his book Let Us Dream, written with Pope Francis.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby got a laugh in Saint Peter’s Cathedral when he said that he didn’t know when he agreed to be at the festival that he was going to have to follow the Pope. When the audience was asked to raise their hands if they had never been in Saint Peters before, about a quarter did so.

The Archbishop gave an interesting insight to his experience of working alongside the Pope and  the former moderator of the Church of Scotland on a retreat at the Vatican which brought together warlords and generals from South Sudan. This is an area of the world which has seen 400,000 deaths and 2.5m displaced refugees. The work to get them there was a miracle in itself and took two and a half years.

As the Sudanese delegations stood in a room, the Pope, after offering some words about the “gaze of Christ",, bent down and kissed each of the leader’s feet and said, “I beg you to make Peace."

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS: 4 Corners Festival walkers pause at the bridge at the new Farset Dam park to welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby
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BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS: 4 Corners Festival walkers pause at the bridge at the new Farset Dam park to welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

None of the guests expected to have to know the protocol of what to do if the Pope kisses your shoes. For some it was simply tears, a softening. The Archbishop spoke of Peace worldwide and it needed to be consummated between the people in the country, rather than have outsiders come in and tell people what to do. It was a case of helping people to “disagree well".

He spoke of the story of peace and reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral and how the clergy at the time asked people to forgive the German bombers who had decimated the Medieval Cathedral. Having knowledge of the work Coventry Cathedral still does as UK’s City of Reconciliation, I think we may not want to be told what to do but we could do with a bit of help from time to time from others who have done the work for longer. Help us disagree well with different opinions and perspectives but not break into violence as a result.

The power of art once again shone when Bright Umbrella Theatre company performed a read through of extracts of the once-banned Sam Thompson play Over the Bridge. It was banned by the NI Government after James Ellis of Z Cars fame and director of the theatre had decided to put it on. The troupe left the theatre and forming their own theatre group went on to present it to over 80,000 people across Ireland and the UK, it’s run only grinding to a half in London’s West End when people could not understand the Belfast accents.

Bright Umbrella Theatre company are reviving Over The Bridge for its 60-year anniversary and touring a play that captures the reality of the dock yard workers life at the time.

The visual art component of 4 Corners was curated by Carole Kane with eight artists commissioned to make/show work based on this year’s theme Common Good, Common Ground.

Each night at 10pm, Jim Deeds and McKayla Barbour led the night prayer as “a beathing together at the end of the day”.

We had an introduction video of the artist’s work, a chat with the artists about the art, then moved into a night prayer via Zoom with a bit of song by Jim Deeds. The acoustics in Clonard Cathedral supported the music part of the segment in particular on the night they interviewed Steven Wilson there. The pandemic has forced many of us out of our status quo and into different ways of working. Unsure how it would work this year’s Night Prayer interactive opportunity gave a new way to contemplate art in a prayerful way and helped people float into a restful night.

At least that’s what happened to me as one of the artists who also participated most nights the people who came along to my Thursday night segment who had no spiritual practice reported back to me that they had an amazing, peaceful night's sleep afterwards. Maybe that’s part of what people have forgotten that prayer has the ability to do.

 
In idle chit-chat before my night prayer session when McKayla asked me how many churches did I visit in my 12 year, church-visiting odyssey I said “too many”. We went on to speculate on whether there were too many churches or not enough Christians. My view is there are plenty of Christians but they are just not aware of each other.  The 4 Corners festival continues to chip away at our chronic sectarian trauma in every part of the city.  In some areas it's very much physica,l in other areas it’s more invisible or exists solely inside people’s heads. As David Campton of the Methodist Church likes to say, exists in our theology.  I suggest two areas in which 4 Corners can develop in 2023: help the secular community within the city to see just how the churches are really co- operating and have an event around women clergy.