Ss Alban and Stephen Parish memorial Service to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 6/8/23
Each year, around the anniversary of the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Justice Peace and Integrity of Creation Group from Ss Alban and Stephen Catholic Church in St Albans mark the event with a short service. This year the service will be held on Sunday 6th August at 3 pm and as always it will take place, on the theme Against Nuclear Proliferation, at the Abbey Peace Pillar in Sumpter Yard, Holywell Hill, St Albans AL1 1BY. That spot is chosen because in 1945 the then Dean of the Cathedral, Dean Thicknesse, courageously refused to join in with the celebratory ringing of the City’s church bells, mindful of the terrible destruction and suffering caused by those atomic bombs.
In gratitude for the Dean’s compassion, the people of Japan gave a Peace Obelisk to the people of St Albans; that obelisk is now in Sumpter Yard and is the site of the annual memorial service. A fuller contemporaneous note of Dean Thicknesse’s stance and of the response to it appears at https://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,127725,00.html
The service will be followed by tea in the Abbey café or by a picnic in the Abbey grounds.
