44 Leeds UK St Anne's RC Cathedral - cheerleading for the martyrs
Leeds RC Cathedral (St
Anne’s cathedral)
Cheerleading for the
martyrs
I used to live in Leeds
in the 1980s, and I regularly change trains here deliberately ( on the way to visit
my Mother) so I can have lunch with one of my best friends. I asked him to take
me to a couple of churches and we started with the catholic cathedral (remember,
people elsewhere, that most cathedrals in England, and all the ones which are over 500
years old, are Anglican, not catholic).
This cathedral, completed in 1904, has a fine statue which I think is St Anne teaching Our Lady (her daughter), but I am not
sure. There is also a Lampedusa cross, made of bits of wood from a shipwreck in
which many refugees died on their way to try to start a new life in Europe.
You will find a
memorial to the Yorkshire martyrs, a bunch of guys and gals who were killed by
Elizabeth the first because they were catholics. (In Bradford there is actually
a school named after them, the Yorkshire Martyrs Cheerleading and Dance School,
as well as a football club, Yorkshire Martyrs FC. I am not making this up.)
There may be many churches which live stream their masses, but this is the first one I have seen, I think.