{"id":334881,"date":"2025-12-25T12:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T12:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334881\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T12:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T12:16:07","slug":"immigration-debate-dividing-us-incoming-archbishop-of-canterbury-warns-in-christmas-sermon-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334881\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration debate \u2018dividing us\u2019, incoming archbishop of Canterbury warns in Christmas sermon | Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The incoming archbishop of Canterbury has warned in her Christmas<\/a> Day sermon that \u201cour national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Acting in her current role as the bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally<\/a> told St Paul\u2019s Cathedral: \u201cJoy is born exactly where despair expects to triumph. As joy breaks through in our lives it gives us the opportunity to become people who make room.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoom in our homes. Room in our churches. Room in our public conversations and in the attitudes we hold. The joy asks us to allow our lives to be interrupted by the needs of others, just as the people of Bethlehem were interrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mullally continued: \u201cThis insight matters because our own society carries uncertainties that can wear us down. Many feel the weight of economic pressure. Some feel pushed to the margins.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people also \u201cexperience the hardship and injustice of inequality\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

The bishop added: \u201cThese issues do not define the whole of our life together, yet they can leave us wondering whether the world is fraying at the edges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe who are Christians then hold fast to joy as an act of resistance. The kind of joy that does not minimise suffering but meets it with courage.\u201d<\/p>\n

She told the Christmas congregation: \u201cGod chooses to be born precisely into a world like ours. A world of limited resources and crowded homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA world of political tension and uncertainty. A world where people do their best to offer kindness even when they feel stretched. God does not wait for perfect conditions. God arrives in the midst of the incomplete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, spoke of the \u2018walls and barriers\u2019 around the world. Photograph: Duncan Lomax<\/p>\n

In his Christmas Day sermon, the archbishop of York also spoke of divisions in society and how he was \u201cintimidated\u201d by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.<\/p>\n

Stephen Cottrell said he was stopped at checkpoints and that militias told him he could not visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have become, I can think of no other way of putting it, fearful of each other, and especially of strangers,\u201d he said. \u201cWe cannot see ourselves in them. And we, therefore, spurn a common humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with \u201cpersecuted Palestinian communities\u201d in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood nativity scene carving depicting a \u201clarge grey wall\u201d blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sobering to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by local Israeli militias who told us that we couldn\u2019t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said that, as well as \u201cthinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land\u201d, he also thinks of \u201call the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cAnd perhaps, most alarming of all, the ones we build around ourselves and construct in our hearts, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people robbed of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future, means that we are in danger of even failing to welcome Christ when he comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October, Mullally was named as the first\u00a0female archbishop of Canterbury.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pope Leo conducting Christmas mass at St Peter\u2019s Basilica in the Vatican. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A former chief nursing officer for England, who was made a dame in 2005 in recognition of her contribution to nursing and midwifery, she has been bishop of London since 2018.<\/p>\n

The Confirmation of Election ceremony on 28 January at St Paul\u2019s Cathedral will lead to Mullally legally becoming archbishop of Canterbury. She will remain bishop of London until then, and her enthronement will take place at Canterbury Cathedral on 25 March.<\/p>\n

The 105th archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, formally resigned in early January, having announced his intention to stand down in November 2024<\/a> over his handling of one of the church\u2019s worst abuse scandals.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon. Leo said the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God had \u201cpitched his fragile tent\u201d among the people of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Leo was celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the world\u2019s cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

In Thursday\u2019s service with thousands in St Peter\u2019s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by the wars roiling the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cFragile is the flesh of defenceless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,\u201d said the pope.<\/p>\n

\u201cFragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the frontlines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During the Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message and blessing given by the pope at Christmas and Easter, Leo called for an end to all global wars.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the central balcony of St Peter\u2019s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, he lamented conflicts, political, social or military, in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar, and Thailand and Cambodia, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The incoming archbishop of Canterbury has warned in her Christmas Day sermon that \u201cour national conversations about immigration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-334881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}