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The Chairman; Bishop David Writes:

It is always the wells that get to me. On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land it was the wells at Cana in Galilee and at Sychar in Samaria which brought me face to face with the relationship between past and present – the essence of the word “remembrance” which is the heart and soul of the Mass. Of my first visit (1958) to a Glastonbury Pilgrimage, it is the well which sticks in my mind. It spoke of the countless numbers who had drunk and cleaned from that same water supply, and it contributed to that overwhelming sense of the numinous which visitor may feel in the ruins and in the stones.

Today, by virtue of our partnership with WaterAid the Pilgrimage is a source of clean water to many people in Africa.

When the annual Pilgrimage was restored early in the last century our forebears were not so much interested in religious archaeology, as deeply conscious of who had lived and prayed there. This holy place had been first claimed for Christ in Romano-British times, again in the tenth century by the establishment of a religious community and the consecration of the Abbey Church, and yet again in the sixteenth century by the martyrdom of Abbot Richard Whiting.

It is a place made holy by instinctive popular feeling, by sacramental consecration, and by the blood of martyrdom. The Pilgrimage to Glastonbury is to a thrice-holy place, with deep historical memories and traditions, and with a commitment to the needs of the impoverished of the world. It is an opportunity to reclaim a Christian site for Christ, and to gather as Anglican Catholics to encourage one another and to witness for Christ.

That is why I love Glastonbury, and urge you once again to join us in June.

Grace and peace be with you

+ David Silk

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