Processing to the Palace

Yesterday the bishops left Canterbury and came to town.


Thursday, 24 July, was London day, when everyone met for lunch at Lambeth Palace and took tea with the Queen at a Buckingham Palace garden party. There was also an optional “walk of witness” led by Dr Williams to support the Millennium Development Goals.


Bishops march for poverty action

Hundreds of bishops from across the world are to join a procession through central London calling for urgent action to tackle global poverty.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams will lead the walk from parliament to Lambeth Palace.

At a rally he will call on governments to fulfil their promises on aid and development or see the world's poor suffer disease starvation and death.

He will say there is a "genuine opportunity" to end extreme poverty.

But the archbishop will warn that most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by world leaders in 2000 to halve poverty by 2015, will not, be fulfilled by then, and risk never being achieved at all.

He will be joined in his plea to governments to honour their promises on aid by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The march followed by the rally at Lambeth Palace, the home of the archbishop of Canterbury, is being organised during the Lambeth Conference.

"If governments' fail it will lead to further starvation, disease and death," the archbishop will say.

The event will be attended by up to 1,500 faith leaders, diplomats, politicians, heads of charities and other groups.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks; Sir Iqbal Sacranie OBE and Dr Indarjit Singh OBE will be among those joining in the march.

The UN meets on 25 September when there will be a review of progress towards the MDGs.

The MDGs range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/Aids and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.

The archbishop calls the Lambeth Conference once every 10 years to bring churches in the Anglican Communion together.