Canterbury

by Nan Cobbey
Lambeth Conference Communications

"Maravillosa!" said Bishop Julio Holquin Khoury of the Dominican Republic as he sat, catching his breath at Canterbury Cathedral Sunday night.

"Our cathedral [in Santo Domingo], built 1528, was the first in the New World. You can see 500 years. But here you can see 800, eight centuries."

Bishop Khoury was one of 600 bishops and spouses who toured the historic mother church of the Anglican Communion, some following human guides, some carrying tape recorded explanations, others reading from guidebooks.

The curious and fit climbed the 76 steps to the belltower platform and watched volunteer bell ringers pull "the peal" of 14 bells in several different sequences. A guide explained that the volunteers - 50 in Canterbury, 200 in Kent - are all members of the Kent County Association of Change Ringers founded in 1880.

Group after group stood, awed, on the martyrdom transept before the sculpture marking the place of St. Thomas Becket's murder. "It's an extraordinary story, really," said Lt. Col. Dick Bolton, a guide. Adaku Ihuoma Grace Iheagwam, wife of the Bishop of Egbu, Nigeria, has never heard the account before. "I enjoyed hearing about ... a bishop who stood on his principles for the church and against the king," she said.

Everyone wandering through the 900-year-old cathedral heard assistant organist Timothy Noon as he played and demonstrated the organ console above the pulpitum screen. Only a few dozen were able to actually visit his aery, escorted up in the small groups of. Noon said people seemed "quite surprised at the number of pipes - three and half thousand." The largest, he told them, was 35-feet; the smallest "less than an inch."

Visitors wandered the chambers of the cathedral for several hours watching stone carvers and candle-makers, talking to librarians and repairers of vestments, hearing stories of archbishops and pilgrims, learning of tombs and history before settling into quiet for Compline and the ride home.