I had an email this morning from the Bishop's Chaplain announcing the death of Fr Graham Francis, a good friend and colleague since we were at St Mike's together over fifty years ago. He's lived with an inoperable stomach cancer for several years, continuing with life as best he could with his strength and mobility slowly waning away, without giving up on performing any priestly activity he remained capable of. We were together con-celebrating the Sung Mass at St Saviour's a month ago. I wondered then if it would be the last occasion. Even so, Eleri and I agreed that we'd meet up for coffee again as a foursome early in this New Year, but it wasn't to be. He died late yesterday night
He was admitted to Holm Towers on New Year's Eve, and visited there by family and colleagues. Two priests he worked with closely over many years were at his bedside, along with family members in his last hours, saying the Rosary and Litany of the Saints to send him on his way, which would be exactly how he would have wanted things to be. As the commendatio animae was recited he slipped quietly away.
It was a good, peaceful Catholic death for a priest and pastor who adhered to traditionalist spirituality and convictions without compromise. He believed he could remain an Anglican Catholic as long as the integrity of traditional and liberal modern thinking were respected in the church of his birth. He was respectful of women clergy from whom he felt unable to take Communion, and gracious when working with them as colleagues. He was a committed ecumenist who practised ecumenism within the Anglican fold as well as with other denominations. Not only that, he was a mine of information about the history of church congregations old and new which existed in the city and further afield.
He will be best remembered for his encyclopaedic knowledge of every kind of liturgy, tradition and custom which has its place in the Catholic Church. He had a huge collection of liturgical books pamphlets and texts of every kind, collected since he was a teenager, a unique specialist library of material, for which, as I understand it sadly, no home has yet been found. His involvement in both liturgical revision and liturgical renewal in practice has exerted a positive widespread influence in the Church in Wales and further afield. For him tradition was a living dynamic affair, not just clinging to old fixed ways, but engaging pastorally and adapting to every social and cultural context without ever needing to compromise the truth of orthodox Christian doctrine. He understood that tradition is 'the life of the Holy Spirit in the church', and exemplified this in his ministry. He will be missed, but for those who remember how things once were, his legacy in the way sacraments are celebrated in many ordinary parishes is unmissable and lasting. May he rest in peace and rise in glory!
Clare's colleague Jacquie came to lunch today. She and Clare walked with me in the park afterwards, but left me to complete my usual longer stretch. Today I wore my new trainers, and these were fine for about the first five miles, and then the ball of my right foot began to hurt. I had to stop to rest it and stretch my ankle when I reached Blackweir bridge, and decided to walk as much of the remaining route as I could on the grass. To my surprise, after walking only a few yards, the pain disappeared and didn't return. This suggests that some of the bones in my foot are slightly out of alignment, but this only shows up when I walk over a certain distance, moving slightly awkwardly. My right leg suffers inevitably from the presence of the wound in the right side of my perineum. The knocks the whole of my body out of alignment. It's something I have to think a lot about and compensate for, including the occasional osteo-myologist visit.
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