'Champion of the Oppressed' Celebrated and Remembered at Chichester Cathedral...

The Dean of Chichester Cathedral is soon to launch a fascinating series of lectures to celebrate Chichester's famous Bishop George Bell, who died 50 years ago this year (1883 -1958).

The series of lectures begins on Tuesday 15th April at 6.30pm with "George Bell - A Life in a Landscape" by Dr Andrew Chandler, Director of the George Bell Institute at the University of Chichester. Subsequent lectures will be given by a number of famous speakers including Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, Rector of the Royal College of Art, The Rt Hon Frank Field MP and Dame Mary Tanner, President of the World Council of Churches. (Full lecture programme attached below).

George Bell is famous worldwide for his life's work and his memorial in the Cathedral records him as a "Champion of the Oppressed" and "A True Pastor, Poet and Patron of the Arts". Nowadays, Bell is most famously remembered for championing the people of Germany suffering under the Third Reich. He befriended refugees from Germany, issued repeated warnings about the dangers of Nazism, and pleaded - controversially - for the sparing of German cities and their civilian populations during the saturation bombings in the last years of the war. Bell also befriended Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German pastor and theologian, who was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler in 1944. Bonhoeffer was eventually hanged, and it was to George Bell that he sent his last recorded greeting: "Tell him that for me this is the end, the beginning of life..."

The historic Bell-Arundel Screen in Chichester Cathedral was erected in Bell's memory in 1961 by his "friends and admirers in many lands and of many faiths."

The lectures take place in the Nave of the Cathedral, following Choral Evensong, and all are welcome. Admission is free.

The lectures are part of a substantial events programme celebrating both George Bell and 900 years of Chichester Cathedral - please see notes below.

Further information from the Cathedral Offices 01243 782595 or www.chichestercathedral.org.uk