February 2025

At the west end of your cathedral, on the south wall nearest the main entrance, is a large slate stone which records all the names of the Bishops of Salisbury. Mine is the most recent to have been inscribed. I am number 79. Someone else will follow. It serves to make one feel small rather than important.

The first name is that of Herman, whose day falls this month on 20th February. A native of Lorraine (in north-eastern France), Herman was made Bishop of Ramsbury in 1045. He resigned in 1055 when King Edward the Confessor refused to allow the transfer of the see to Malmesbury. He became a monk at Saint-Omer (in northern France), returning to England in 1058 to become Bishop of Sherborne while at the same time being restored to the bishopric of Ramsbury. By 1071, Herman was old and infirm and wished to resign but Archbishop Lanfranc urged him to stay on. There was a plan. Approval of the transfer of the see was given at the Council of London in 1075, thus creating the new diocese of Salisbury, to which you belong. Herman oversaw the initial construction of the Cathedral at Old Sarum but died before its completion, on 20th February in 1078.

Herman would have known where you live and known and cared for your patch of the diocese. A diocese is only the sum total of its parts, and whilst it is the Anglican model of apostolic local leadership, the real strength of mission and ministry is to be found in the local, just as Jesus’ ministry was locally based and exercised. We all follow in the footsteps of those who have carried the flame of faith before us in each place. It is that faithfulness, mirroring the fact that God is faithful, that has sustained our communities down the ages, however much the times and the names change. And God will continue to do so, because He is faithful.

Stephen, Bishop of Salisbury


March 2024

A century ago, the great journalist and Catholic provocateur G.K.Chesterton wrote a wonderful essay entitled ‘The Priest of Spring’ in which he considered the integration of the Christian seasons with the natural year – and referred to the “armies of the intellect who will fight to the end on whether Easter is to be congratulated on fitting in with the spring or the spring on fitting in with Easter”.

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February 2024

It won’t have escaped many of us that this year, Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. This may feel like an uncomfortable union.

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November 2023

Praying for the People God Knows We Need. This autumn it has been a joy to institute and licence a record number of clergy to new posts and as well as being the beginning of new ministry for individuals, communities and parishes, these services represent the culmination of months of careful work.

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December 2023

In my former parish, there were various experiments we made to make the most of the unique atmosphere of preparation and excitement accompanying Advent.

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October 2023

October is one of those months when the leaves begin to change and fall, and somewhat comical excuses come into conversations about why things don’t work. Leaves on the line may well be a technical problem for the railways, but we all know it also means, somewhat ironically, why is it somethings just don’t work as they should. 

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September 2023

Harvest, in the agricultural sense, is well past. All is safely (or soggily) gathered in and the appealing blocks of barley and hay baling our landscape into a pop-up sculpture park have all but disappeared. The Church’s Harvest celebrations

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July 2023

I write this at the end of no mow May, and during a week when we are remembering to care for God’s acre, so I am thinking about all those who serve in many ways tending our churchyards and enabling them to be places where God’s creation and God’s presence can be experienced. Thank you.


June 2023

One year ago, I became your bishop with that great service in the cathedral. It has been the fastest year in many ways, with changes coming at us all with a post-pandemic pace that has somewhat stunned us all.


May 2023

How does one crown a king? After much rehearsal and with a steady hand, I suspect – and bated breath around the globe in that solemn moment...


April 2023

I wonder whether we can remember how we were feeling 3 years ago as we approached Easter?  Lockdown feels a long time ago, however I was reminded through an article read recently that we have all experienced a major trauma in our lives which we have somehow lived through.

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