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The Cardinal Who Pointed Us to the Best

01 August 1999

Cardinal Basil Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, died on 17 June mourned not just by Britain's Roman Catholics but by many of different faiths and of none.
He was in a sense a 'reluctant' Archbishop. As the relatively unknown Benedictine Abbot of Ampleforth, he was appalled when his name was first mooted: 'Me Archbishop?' he said. 'Don't be so ridiculous! I'd make a lousy archbishop.'

Yet his sense of obedience was greater than his love of the life of a monk. He thus suddenly found himself not only the leader of the Roman Catholics of England and Wales but a voice of faith and conscience for the country--'a towering figure in the moral landscape of Britain', to quote the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

'It was because people recognized that he was full of love and humility that they felt... that he was a man of special value to them,' commented William Rees-Mogg in The Times. Indeed, his was a leadership born of devotion to God rather than confidence in his own abilities. In its obituary, The Times wrote: 'His diffident but powerful personality became firmly impressed on the public consciousness...'

'Throughout his life he was more fearful of praise than criticism,' said John Crowley, the Bishop of Middlesbrough, giving the sermon at Hume's funeral: 'To a friend whose virtues were being over-sung in his hearing he remarked, "Enjoy that, but don't inhale please!" '

For his funeral, Cardinal Hume chose a reading from the Book of Wisdom (Chapter 13, verses 1-9). The Independent writer Paul Vallely described it as 'a paean to the God responsible for a world of beauty, with a sting-in-the-tale (sic) admonition for those who see the former and fail to make the connection to the God who made it'.

Crowley commented, 'It is a very strong passage, reflecting the Cardinal's deep and growing concern that the judgement on our age might finally be: "We were clever but not wise. If they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things."'

One of Cardinal Hume's last remarks was: 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven--that's the only thing which really matters. What God wants for us is what is best for us.' It is the clue to how to bridge the gap between cleverness and the wisdom which we so badly need if we are to make a go of this world of ours.

Kenneth Noble