Today is also the Optional Memoria of St Edward the Confessor, the last but one Anglo-Saxon King of England. It was he who established Westminster Abbey, and his shrine is still a place of pilgrimage. Pope Benedict prayed there during his Apostolic Visit to our country in 2010.

In the challenges of our own time, may St Edward pray for us, for faithfulness to the ideals for which he strove, and may God bless you this day.