Sentamu on Sunday
Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has hit the headlines once again. The controversial primate appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s new paper, the Sun on Sunday.
He wrote the paper’s first ‘Sermon on Sunday’, in which he spoke of new beginnings and called on people to use Lent as an occasion to look at how they were living.
However, despite what was undoubtedly some post-draft editing by Sun on Sunday editorial staff, he was widely condemned for supporting a venture by Mr Murdoch, whose News of the World was shut down last year due to the phone hacking scandal.
The furore came as Sentamu’s strong comments in the Daily Telegraph, in opposition to Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to allow same-sex couples to wed, created a strong backlash of hate mail. Much of this mail, according to North Yorkshire police, was of an offensive and racist nature.
Dr Sentamu, the highest-ranking black man in the Church of England, is no shrinking violet, however. After graduating to the Bench in Uganda during the 1970s, he incurred the wrath of dictator Idi Amin, allegedly because of Dr Sentamu’s judicial independence.
He was locked up for 90 days, three weeks after his marriage. He then fled to Britain, was eventually called to ordination in the Church of England, and is now the second highest-ranking archbishop, next only to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
