Upper-Room-Ken-Letts - Parish of the Parks

HERE, THERE & BACK AGAIN
Talk by Fr Ken Letts on Tuesday 4 February
More than 50 people were transported to France’s melting pot of intellectual, theological and
ecumenical ideas when Father Ken Letts addressed a dinner gathering at Café Continental in Albert
Park on Tuesday 4 February this year, organised by the St Silas Anglican Church.
Father Ken, a former vicar of St Silas and chaplain of St Michael’s Grammar School in East St Kilda,
told of his 20 years as the Anglican Vicar of Nice and Archdeacon of France, a time he described as
dynamic and fascinating in forming connections between the Church of England, the people of France
and the Christian churches of Europe.
The title of the fluent French speaker’s presentation, Here, There and Back Again, in some ways
understated the remarkable journey that he and wife Isobel had undertaken, and his achievements that
last year culminated in the Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour (France’s
equivalent of a knighthood), his retirement, and his return to Australia alone.
St Silas Vicar Father Ray McInnes said Father Ken, “was crowned, not only by the Anglican Church,
but by France, which has recognised him as a key figure in the ecumenical movement … in bringing
people together.”
Father Ken’s “inaugural gig in Australia” since returning from France, as Father Ray described it,
attracted an audience from far and wide, including parishioners from St Silas and surrounding
churches, and his former colleagues from St Michael’s and Melbourne Grammar School.
“It is emotionally moving to see so many people who I know from St Silas, including church wardens,”
Father Ken said, “even people who knew me before I was ordained.” He also spoke to the assembled
crowd of the sad death of his wife Isobel only months before they were due to return to Australia.
Events leading to Father Ken’s appointment as the vicar of Nice in 1993-94 were a mixture of
misfortune, happenstance and gentle persuasion. While they might be seen as blessings in heavy
disguise, they occurred in relatively quick succession and led to a remarkable change in the lives of
Father Ken and Isobel over the next 20 years.
In the early 1990s, Father Ken was the full-time chaplain at St Michael’s and the part-time and probono vicar of St Silas. Father Ray said it had been a time when St Silas was “at the crossroads … it was
a crucial time in its life, and then a generous man was found”. That man, born in a nearby borough
who as a boy had attended Holy Trinity Port Melbourne, had turned the parish around.
In 1993, Father Ken took a fateful three months of long-service leave in Europe. While on a train from
Paris to Madrid, Isobel was pick-pocketed of all their money, visas and airline tickets, and though they
later recovered their tickets in a rubbish bin, their visas were never found. The couple sought assistance
and spent some time in Madrid before heading back to Paris, whereupon they received a message from
their Power of Attorney in Australia saying that they had no money left in their bank accounts.
Soon after arriving in Paris, Father Ken accepted locum work in Nice on half a stipend to help them see
out his long-service leave, and after three months in the ancient city on the Mediterranean Sea, not far
from the Italian border, they returned home to Australia.
Having settled back into life at St Michael’s and St Silas, Father Ken received a letter from the
Anglican Bishop of Europe two months later, asking him to accept a full-time, three-year posting in
Nice. He replied ‘thanks, but no thanks’, however the Bishop was not deterred. Soon another letter
arrived asking Father Ken to “seriously reconsider” the offer, adding that the Archbishop of Melbourne
had been made aware of his refusal and the re-offering of the position. This time Father Ken answered
‘yes’.
Isobel and Father Ken, the son of a former mayor of Port Melbourne and a one-time Queen’s Scout,
completed the initial posting of three years in Nice and then accepted offers to extend their stay. In all,
the couple remained for 20 years in the city founded four centuries before Christ.
In their final year in France, Isobel tragically died of cancer only months before they were due to return
to Australia. Father Ken said Isobel had loved France and had made it her own. “People loved her and
got to know her through walking the dogs,” King Charles Cavaliers.
Isobel had been a wonderful hostess at the ecumenical meetings, he said, but had surprisingly become
less confident in speaking French – a bit insecure – which had confounded Father Ken somewhat.
“The cancer came very quickly at the end,” he said. “She had had tests in May (last year) that indicated
everything was fine, but two months later she was dead.”
Father Ken said he cared for his wife up until the last 10 days. “She found it difficult to speak, so I
played music, read and talked. We’d say evening prayers together and have compline together. She
died very peacefully.”
The dogs and their cat are still yet to clear quarantine and return to Father Ken in St Kilda.
Father Ken said the 20 years he spent in Nice were rewarding and stimulating, and had given him a
new sense of perspective on the role of the Church of England in Europe and the particular roles that
France – and Nice in particular – had played.
Whatever the benefits of the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in
1534, one of the curious things was that the English church became cut off from the intellectual
movement in Europe over the years, Father Ken said. It became insular, he said, and apart from contact
with embassies and merchant guilds in northern Europe, its relationship with Europe was non-existent.
But by the 19th century, the first of the wealthy Englishmen and artists had made their Grand Tour of
Italy, Greece and the Holy Land, sometimes settling in the locals, and the Anglican diocese in Europe
soon followed. The first, the Diocese of Gibraltar on English territory, was established in 1843,
followed quickly by Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and the Holy
Land, all of which the Bishop of Europe (based in Gibraltar) could visit by boat. The parish of Nice
became part of the Diocese of Gibraltar.
France was a fascinating place religiously, Father Ken said, a place that in our lifetime had suffered
persecution like no other Western country. For churches in France today, relations with the state were
very much in the foreground, he said, due in part to a 1905 government decree to confiscate all church
property and expel all religious orders (apart from orders of teaching nuns). Now, maintenance of those
properties was the responsibility of the state.
Father Ken said the state of affairs had forced churches to think about how to reach out and speak with
contemporary communities, and thereby speak indirectly to government. It had honed the French
theological mind, he said, taking their churches to the cutting edge of theological thought.
French churches had adopted what he described as a form of “active humanism”, and had encouraged
greater ecumenical links, including between countries such as France and England. It was no surprise
that French theologians had been important figures in establishing the Week of Prayer for Christian
Unity in 1908, the development of Vatican II reforms in the early 1960s, and some more recent
liturgical changes.
He said that in communicating the rich heritage of the Anglican Church in Europe, in opposing past
insular attitudes, he had been encouraged by the words of the then Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan
Williams seemed to have had a real sense of the catholicism of the Anglican Church, he said, its
universality.
The city of Nice itself seemed to personify the challenge of reform that Father Ken took up, to
challenge the orthodoxy, and to be different. Nice was founded before Paris, and though it became a
part of France in 1789, the populace retained a sense of independence and spoke a dialect of French, he
said. The city also had a unique micro-climate due to its geography, sited on a flat plain by the sea,
surrounded by the mountainous amphitheatre of the French Alps. “Nice was fascinating; independent
and independent thinking,” he said.
The Anglican Church established the parish of Holy Trinity in Nice in 1820, under the jurisdiction of
the Bishop of London. In World War 2 the English simply locked it up and abandoned it, but the
Germans didn’t bother with it.
Father Ken said that when beginning his mission he found a church that had, in a sense, remained
closed since the war. “It was an exemplar of the dangers of Anglican churches in Europe – closed
almost all the time and now sited in the city, having been built in the country.” It was “unreformed”, he
said, and was viewed as more a private English club than a church.
Father Ken said that he wanted to “change the whole mentality of the church, and change how other
churches related to us”. He told church officials that they should understand that “the first thing I’ll do
is open the doors,” and while the hierarchy agreed, he said they worried that “people might come in”.
“That’s the whole idea!” he said he told them. “We have a responsibility to the wider community.”
“People came in in their scores,” Father Ken said. “The hall was a place where vulnerable people could
meet – Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc, without charge. The parish doubled in
size while I was there. We had 120 people to Sunday mass. That changed things.”
Music also played an important role in bringing people into the parish and invigorating the
congregation. “The acoustics in the church were great,” he said, and he developed a good relationship
with the organist. “Once he realised I was on his side, things went wonderfully,” Father Ken said.
Choirs from Scandinavia, England and the US sang in the church.
The community was not huge, and so Father Ken raised money in league with others, such as the
Sisters of the Poor. “It was clear we were part of a wider community, all inter-related,” he said. “The
Anglican church in Europe is not there to proselytise, but to build bridges with others.”
Relationships grew, and Holy Trinity came to host monthly ecumenical meetings of clergy from the
Catholic, Protestant, Baptist and Orthodox churches (Russian, Greek, Romanian and Armenian). “Here
were Christian people praying and talking together … a really creative ecumenism.”
Father Ken held mass on Thursdays for Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy to pray for Christian
unity, and conducted events during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. “I was thrilled that that was
contributing.” He also made himself available for radio interviews about the ecumenical initiatives to a
listening audience of about 10,000. He found the work “very creative indeed”, and the Synod in Europe
“dynamic and interesting”.
In closing, Father Ken was asked if he had a message for St Silas and its congregation in Albert Park.
“Really the one thing God asks of us is not to be successful, but to be faithful. I am delighted to see St
Silas as it is today. You have the great benefit of having a faithful priest. Love one another and keep the
faith.”

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