Sacred Mysteries: Anglicans in the heart of Rome So it happens that Armagh, the see of Cardinal Sean Brady, is in Northern Ireland. The Cardinal himself is Irish, but he is entitled to vote in national elections in Armagh, if he wishes. And he will be voting in the conclave, too. How this benefits the rest of the English-speaking United Kingdom, I have no idea. The Anglican Centre (whose emblem is pictured here) occupies some rooms in the vast and pleasantly unimproved Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, through the generosity of the family. On the piano nobile of the palace there are breathtaking Old Master paintings and an astonishing Baroque corridor of mirrors, but no heating in the winter. The Anglican centre is another two floors up, with a high, book-lined library, a simple chapel and a salone where the dozen or so who come to Tuesday lunchtime Eucharist share a bowl of pasta and friendly conversation. It is not a mission station for the conversion of Rome. That would be reminiscent of the bold approach of the Rev George Townsend, who visited the Eternal City in 1850 with the intention of converting Pope Pius IX to the truths of Protestantism. The idea was to get the pope to call a general council to repeal the canons of the 16th-century Council of Trent. Townsend succeeded in gaining an audience with Pope Pius. His clearly puzzled reaction is recounted in Townsend's Journal of a Tour in Italy in 1850, with an Account of an Interview with the Pope in the Vatican. No, the aims of the Anglican Centre are ecumenical. It came into being in 1966 after the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury, who understood each other far better than Townsend and Pius. Canon Richardson is ending his tour of duty at the end of April. Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Vatican's Council for Promoting Christian Unity, says that his work had "helped promote a distinctive Anglican contribution to the unity of the Church." The next director of the Anglican Centre will be the Most Rev David Moxon. He has been in charge of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, which has an even more confusing polity than the Church of Ireland, since it has three archbishops in charge at once, rather surprisingly having one representing the Maori people of New Zealand, one the non-Maoris there, and the third Polynesia. Archbishop Moxon will continue as chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, an ecumenical body hard at it since 1969. But I'm not sure that the pasta and conversation side of things doesn't achieve as much.