The Roman Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton has intervened in the row over a Petworth Festival jazz concert held at a church in Duncton last Saturday.
Bishop Kieran Conry, who has just returned from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, said he had no intention of stopping the show going ahead, despite pleas from a Petworth parishioner, Christopher Savage, a worshipper at the parent church in Petworth, the Sacr
ed Heart.
Mr Savage, who had also written to the Vatican, had claimed that the sacredness of the Church of St Anthony and St George would be violated by the concert, given at lunchtime by Campbell Burnap and his All-Star Jazz Band.
Mgr Conry told the Midhurst and Petworth Observer this week: "I had no intention of blocking the performance because that would have been disruptive. The church cannot be seen acting in such a heavy-handed and insensitive manner."
And he said that, technically, the ruling from Rome under which Mr Savage had made his challenge, would bar any secular music from being performed in a Roman Catholic church.
"There would be no difference between a Beethoven quartet and jazz. You cannot make a judgement on the style of the music," the bishop said.
Full report in the August 11 issue of the
Midhurst & Petworth Observer