After a three-year break due to Covid-19, St Christopher’s Cathedral is restoring the tradition of an annual St Christopher’s Dinner with an invited prominent speaker.
They have been held annually since 2010 in a variety of venues in earlier years in five-star hotels, but also in the Golf Club, the British Club and the Bapco Club.
Several British ambassadors and deputy ambassadors have spoken at the dinner in previous years. Jamie Bowden spoke at the first dinner on the role of an ambassador, Iain Lindsay on reconciliation, highlighting the experience of Northern Ireland, and Simon Martin, in the special year marking 200 years of friendship between the UK and Bahrain, speaking about the history of that relationship.
Other speakers have served in prominent roles in Bahrain, often reflecting on how their faith inspires them.
Vice-Admiral Mark Fox, the Commanding Officer of the US Navy Fifth Fleet, spoke in 2011; in 2012 we welcomed an actor from the UK, John Sibley, who presented a powerful one-man show, Jesus my Boy, exploring the life of Jesus through the eyes of Joseph; Captain Mark Steiner, Force Fleet Chaplain in 2013, spoke of the experience of being Chaplain at the Pentagon on 9/11, Princess Madawi Abdulrahman Al Saud who was interviewed on the subject ‘Human beings are not for trafficking’ in 2014; Mockbul Ali spoke in 2017 on the theme Keeping faith in an Unpredictable World; and Marietta Dias, chairperson of the Migrant Workers Protection Society, spoke about Helping expatriate workers achieve their basic human rights in 2018.
The 10th St Christopher’s Day Dinner in 2019, because of Covid-19, was also the last and the Cathedral Council asked me to be the speaker at what was my and my wife Tricia’s farewell and I reflected back on 10 years at the cathedral and the changes to the community in that time.
Unexpectedly, I’m back for 10 weeks at the cathedral as a locum priest, having retired to Birmingham, and one of the events that I suggested was restarting the tradition of the St Christopher’s Dinner, now that restrictions due to the pandemic have been lifted.
The dinner on Thursday, June 23 at 7pm will be held at the Crossroads Restaurant in the Marriot Executive Apartments in Juffair.
It has a rather more informal and intimate feel than many of the previous venues, but I think it will work very well and we look forward to this year’s speaker, Maria Khoury, who will be reflecting on her role as chairperson of the National Institution for Human Rights over several years.
The dinner has always sought to be more than a cathedral event and to reach out to the wider community in Bahrain hence the great variety of subjects and speakers.
We aim to have a good dinner and a speaker who will challenge us to think and act more understandingly and compassionately. We also aim to keep the cost of the dinner at a level that people on lower incomes can hopefully afford, recognising that it is a special night out.
Tickets, priced BD11 are available from the cathedral office. For more details call 17253866.
Revd Chris
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