Issue 5 - April 2011 - Ampleforth College

14
EAST AND WEST JOIN IN PRAYER FOR FINAL UNITY
East and West join in
prayer for final unity
In a now established tradition, the choir of
the Abbey Church hosted a Solemn
Orthodox Liturgy on 22nd January to mark
the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The celebrant, Fr David Carnelly, is a
curate in Leeds and pastor to Orthodox
students at Leeds University. He also leads
the community of St Constantine and St
Helen in central York, whose services are
mainly in English, with some use of Greek
and Slavonic.
Fr Simeon Piers, a priest of the Greek
Orthodox province of Thyateira and Great
Britain, and previously warden of St
Simeon’s House, a former hostel in
Oswaldkirk for Orthodox students of the
College, in the 1970s, also participated.
Several large icons represented the
Iconastasis, a screen shutting off the
sanctuary, found in Orthodox churches. Fr
Alexander McCabe conducted the
ecumenical choir with members drawn
from the Catholic parish of Our Lady and
St Chad, Kirkbymoorside, and the Anglican
parishes of All Saints, Kirkbymoorside, and
St Mary, Lastingham, in its singing of music
of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom from
the Russian Orthodox tradition.