For All Who Lead
Tuesday 24 March 2026
The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos
For All Who Lead – a sermon preached on the Eve of the Archbishop’s Installation
A long queue of the opinionated and the self-regarding has already formed. Online and in print its members clamour to offer the Archbishop of Canterbury the advice which they believe she needs to hear and to heed.
I am not a member of that queue and would not presume to offer advice to someone whose pastoral gifts, clarity of purpose, and strategic wisdom are remembered with great affection in this place.
In any event, on this, the eve of her installation, the Church honours Walter Hilton and Oscar Romero. Tomorrow, the day of her installation, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation to blessed Mary. And, without any need to trumpet an agenda or form a queue, each of these observances offers the one who would lead – whether in Church or in State – something of value.
Walter Hilton is one of the fourteenth century English mystics. Like us, he lived in a troubled age of plague, popular insurrection, and constitutional instability. In The Scale of Perfection, he calls all Christians to a patient seeking after God – in a word, to holiness. The concern of the baptized is not ultimately to worry about the institution or to theorize about the divine. The concern of the baptized is that the institution and its theology should be cognizant of their limitations and serve a purpose beyond their power. ‘…Wonderfully he stirreth and mightily he turneth thy heart into beholding of his goodness,’ Hilton writes, ‘and doth thine heart melt delectably as wax against the fire into softness of his love.’ Primates – and presidents – must step outside their echo chambers, move beyond their flatterers, and jettison their control freakery, exposing themselves to that which transcends their motives and objectives.
Oscar Romero was cut down as he celebrated Mass on this day forty-six years ago. Whenever the Archbishop enters her Cathedral she will pass the place where her predecessor met a similar fate 856 years ago. Like Thomas Becket, Romero was considered a safe archiepiscopal appointment – a safe pair of hands, we might say – one who would cause the governing regime few problems. And like Thomas, Romero discovered that, in conscience, his office compelled him to speak and to act for those in his care, whatever the risk. ‘We cannot do everything,’ he says, ‘and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest’. Oscar and Thomas both had the humility to assess what had been, to review it, and to change course. Both were leaders with a proper sense of their own contingency, leaders who understood that they were called to serve more than their own interests.
And Mary says ‘yes’ to God. As has often been observed, she could not have known what the consequences of that ‘yes’ would be, but she must have feared that none of them were likely to end well for her. There would be public disgrace and an isolated life of penury – at the very least. It was the most courageous ‘yes’ in human history. ‘Her consent’ writes Thomas Merton, ‘opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God…through her wise answer, through obedient understanding…God enters without publicity into the city of rapacious men’. Mary trusts; Mary says ‘yes’; and our liberation is secured. It all turns upon her courage. I somehow doubt that the girl from Nazareth ever saw herself as a leader, but all who aspire to lead might recall that example of obedience, of faith, of courage.
Hilton requires that leaders submit themselves to an authority which they cannot bribe or coerce; Romero requires that leaders refuse the pretence that they are unbound; our Lady requires that leaders make the call that does them no favours but is right nonetheless.
Walter, Oscar, blessed Mary: pray for your sister, Sarah, pray for all who lead, and pray for us.
Amen.