Message from the Bishop of Leeds

The last year has continued to be challenging for everyone, not least the cathedral. However, as we learn to live with and shape the post-pandemic world, new opportunities for service will emerge.

The cathedral is there to open people to God and draw people into a vision of God’s kingdom that is attractive and real. The vision doesn’t change even when the context does.

In this last year we saw the retirement of the Dean, Jerry Lepine, to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude. Following his departure, Paul Maybury has been the Acting Dean and has been supported by Philip Gray in an interim capacity as Precentor. Mandy Coutts, the churchwardens and Chapter have continued to drive the life of the cathedral with their colleagues – thus demonstrating that change need not be the end. We now await the arrival of the next Dean of Bradford, Andy Bowerman, in June 2022.

Bradford Cathedral has continued to play a rich role in the city and diocese, providing much more than a venue for a wide range of events and celebrations. The building is widely seen as a locus of peace and quiet, but also of real engagement with contemporary issues and challenges. This is only possible because of the creative engagement and commitment of those who form its community. This was seen acutely when one of its dearly-loved members was murdered and the community lived lovingly in the aftermath.

I remain hugely grateful to the Cathedral and commend its future to God.

William Porter of the Beacon House of Prayer, in Stoke-on-Trent, met up with a group of Christians in the Mirror Pool of City Park in July 2021, to take part in the fifth day of ‘Cross Walk 21’, an initiative to trace out the shape of the cross in fifty-one cities across England as part of a series of prayer walks.