If there is one thing I long for above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture.

It does not matter to the killers if their victims are Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Humanist; what matters is that they show that they can kill where they please.

Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality.

Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old.

Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

To be a Christian is to believe we are commanded and authorised to say certain things to the world; to say things that will make disciples of all nations.

My visit this autumn is an opportunity to continue that rich tradition of visits between Canterbury and Rome.