Sentamu Sunday

ON high days and holy days - the latter especially - he is the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu, Lord Archbishop of York, Primate of England and quite a few other things, besides.

Outside the ancient parish church of All Saints, Northallerton, the notice simply proclaims "Sentamu Sunday" - though doubtless the archbishop remains most reverend and right honourable - and in two words says it all.

The place is chocker.

John Sentamu has been Archbishop of York - he says he prefers Archbishop for York - since November 2005. In the Church of England he's the titular number two, in the country's archaic order of precedence he's one step behind the Lord Chancellor and one in front of the Prime Minister.

His time has been high profile, challenging, dynamic and dramatic, most recently when he cut up his dog collar on Sunday morning television, vowing never again to wear it until Robert Mugabe was out of Zimbabwe.

He could be the church's Kevin Keegan, though less likely to fancy himself as the messiah. Howard Smith, Northallerton's vicar, puts it better. "He has that Heineken effect," he says.

We've earlier asked his press officer if it might be possible to have ten minutes with the archbishop when all else is said and done. Properly and politely, the press officer suggests giving it a go but has his doubts. What he means is that it's like trying to catch the wind.

After Northallerton, he's dashing off to Warrington, still part of the province of York. The following morning he'll be on an early train to London, two days after that flying off for a week of highlevel meetings in Rome.

Were he in westerns he'd be the Lone Ranger, a kemo sabe to an anxious Church. It best translates as "trusted friend"; Dr Sentamu could be a friend in need.

THE sixth of 13 children, John Sentamu was born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1949. He read law, practised as an attorney at the Ugandan High Court and was just 24 when the dictator Idi Amin made him a judge.

Unlike others, Sentamu refused to compromise judicial independence and - three weeks after his wedding - was himself imprisoned for 90 days. Much later he recalled being "kicked around like a football and beaten terribly".

He fled to England, read theology at Cambridge, became Bishop of Stepney in 1996 and, six years later, Bishop of Birmingham. When he was enthroned at York Minster, he joined the African musicians on drums.

The week previously he'd called for a re-discovering of England's cultural identity. The zeal for multiculturalism, he said, shouldn't prevent the majority culture from telling of its glories and its struggles, its joys and its pains.

The Northallerton visit is for a confirmation service, what might be called a hands-on experience. Once confirmation was almost a rite of passage, now there are just two candidates - 12-year-old Sophie Langford and Susan Gray, 40, who's a sister in the intensive care unit at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton.

Ralph Alderson, the senior churchwarden, admits that just two is disappointing.

"It fluctuates. Last year we had four or five, next year we may again."

Sophie says that all her sisters were confirmed and so she wanted to be, too.

Susan says that she's always been a believer, but that it seemed the right time to reaffirm her faith. "I came to a couple of services here and found them very moving.

"I've a very strong personality. I didn't just do it; I thought the time was right."

An analogy about confirmation being like passing the driving test saunters to mind, at once punctured by the archbishop's sermon. The newly qualified driver can at once go out on his own.

"Jesus is going to be with you 100 per cent of the way," he tells them. "He is with you until the end of time."

ALL Saints is a magnificent old place, partly dating back to the 12th Century and still bearing the scorch marks from sundry raiding Scots who three times tried to burn down the church and much of the rest of Northallerton, too.

The chancel is more modern, its stone laying in 1884 attended by a great frippery of Freemasons who marched around singing that well known hymn "Hail Masonry Divine".

The archbishop stands at the steps with all eyes upon him. Many are probably trying to see what's around his neck. Whatever it is, it isn't a dog collar.

He's fairly small, gently animated. For all the media mileage, he still seems somehow improbable.

His sermon, very neatly, begins with the phrase "If you're anything like me".

It also includes a reference to the Black Sheep Brewery - "just up the road".

It was a competition promoted by Black Sheep which in October 2007 named him "Yorkshireman of the Year", the archbishop musing in his acceptance speech that he must have shared African-Yorkshire DNA. His middle name of Mugabi, he said, was "I-bagum"

backwards. Nothing was said about the president of Zimbabwe.

It's a splendid service, musically memorable, refreshing the parts that perhaps others cannot reach. The two confirmation candidates are sprinkled with water at the font before the laying on of hands at the chancel steps.

Ralph Alderson says afterwards that he'd been a bit anxious about how all the ceremonial bits would go, admits that at one point he'd to use the point duty skills learned many years previously as a member of the North Riding constabulary.

The archbishop, he says, had put everyone at ease. "He's so down to earth, so easy to talk to. Everyone knows him now; we only had to say it was Sentamu Sunday."

Keith Langford, another All Saints stalwart, talks of how Dr Sentamu takes the mystique out of church. "He's bringing people in, they want to hear something different."

Howard Smith, himself said to be a brilliant preacher - "If people heard him for just five minutes, this place would be full every week," says Ralph Alderson - has already said his farewells to the flying archbishop.

"I think his appeal is the combination of Christian commitment and clarity,"

he says. "He has a very organised mind, but remains very down to earth. He even told me the York City score.

"He has enormous responsibility on his shoulders but seems to have the vigour for it. It's been lovely to have him, put it that way."