Letter from the Editor: A very Happy Easter to our readers

Back in 2022, I visited the Garden of Gethsemane – where the Lord’s Passion began with His arrest. Beside the ancient olive grove – some gnarled trees date back 1,000 years – is the Basilica of the Agony (originally a crusader chapel) where I knelt with my wife at the bedrock of stones, encircled by an iron ring of thorns, where Jesus prayed before He was betrayed.

As I prayed for God’s blessing on the Herald’s 133-year-old spiritual mission, I read a passage from St Luke’s Gospel that was framed and chained to the altar rail. Jesus is described as coming down from the Mount of Olives, knowing His end is coming, saying to His apostles: “Pray that you may not be put to the test.”

I thought about this line when I recently sat next to Louisiana Catholic philanthropist Gayle Benson – elegantly dressed in Chanel – at our first “Profile in Faith” dinner in her honour in New York. She was featured in our US Catholic Leaders 2024 survey earlier this year. Mrs Benson, also known as “the First Lady of New Orleans”, is the only businesswoman in America who owns both an NBA football franchise (the New Orleans Saints) and an NBA basketball team (the New Orleans Pelicans) in the same city.

But her life has also been hard and sometimes deeply testing, including a short and painful early marriage, aged 19, and having to deal with a public legal vendetta against her and her late billionaire husband, Tom Benson, by estranged members of his own family who claimed that he was mentally unable to have legally changed his will. (Mrs Benson met her late husband during Monday morning Mass at St Louis Cathedral whilst reading scripture for the day.)

She survived such tests, with a judge throwing all claims out. But throughout her life – her profile will appear in the May issue – what has sustained her through dark times has been a devout and unflinching faith, a strength of belief echoed in the spiritual lyrics of her football team’s anthem, “When the Saints Go Marching In”. To this day, she reads every Sunday in St Louis Cathedral, where she is the capital lead behind the restoration of America’s oldest cathedral. It is the subject of Peter Finney Jr’s fascinating article in the May issue of the magazine which explains how the renovation is being assisted by architects working on Notre Dame’s restoration in Paris.

We are delighted to have Peter Roberts, headmaster of Ampleforth, as our Easter diarist. He has been in the job since January 2023, and, as he reveals, that has been long enough to convert him from being a vegetarian to a fan of roast pheasant – especially those reared on the school’s shoot. I was also taken by his revelation that pupils embraced what he calls a “disconnect to reconnect” initiative. Each week of Lent, students handed in their phones for 24 hours.

Giving a recent talk on religious journalism at Stonyhurst College, I used its old boys Paul Johnson (former editor of the New Statesman and speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher) and Mark Thompson (director-general of the BBC, now president of CNN) as examples of why Catholics may have an unfair advantage as journalists, being outsiders and born to see the world through a different, more detached prism.

In a corner of the Herald’s offices, stuck to the wall, is an obituary of Johnson. He was the epitome of the English Catholic journalist, who divided the world into right and wrong; Stonyhurst taught him to know the difference. Forty-five years after last being there in 1979, I was impressed that its priceless relics – including one of the Holy Thorn belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots, and a rope that bound St Edmund Campion at his martyrdom – are displayed for pupils to see as pieces of living history. In my day, the collections were largely off limits. In my father’s day, the whole school went into silent Retreat during Holy Week . They never even went home.

Things are more relaxed today. The famous Heny VII cope worn at the Field of the Cloth of Gold now stands in a school corridor. My 45-minute talk, in the old refectory, where Cromwell once slept on an oak table, was rounded off by the sixth-form singing the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Then the headmaster, John Browne, announced that the Friday-night wine tasting, led by the school’s sommelier, could begin. Ah, I thought, as I swilled my second glass of South African cabernet: now I know why my talk was packed. A very Happy Easter to our readers.

Photo: Revellers celebrate at the 25th Annual Chris Owens French Quarter Easter Parade, New Orleans, Louisiana, 23 March 2008. Chris Owens was an iconic entertainer who spent over six decades performing for French Quarter audiences.(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.)

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