KENDAL'S Quaker Tapestry and the Milnthorpe Presbytery hosted special events to celebrate the coming together of different religions during National Inter Faith Week.

Monsignor Francis Slattery, parish priest of Milnthorpe and Arnside, led a multifaith celebration at his presbytery. Widely respected by people of all faiths, Monsignor Slattery celebrated his diamond jubilee as a priest last year.

He has long been involved in bringing different faiths together in Cumbria, and his contribution was recognised with a framed map of Jerusalem by Rev John Hetherington, secretary of South Lakeland Interfaith Forum.

Monsignor Slattery said: “In the modern world religion is coming to realise (as if it didn’t already know) that the world is good; it is God’s world. While it may have all the trappings of superficiality, we are not to run away from it but to embrace it and bring it to a realisation of its own inherent goodness.”

Meanwhile, at the Quaker Tapestry, Jacquetta Gomes, secretary of the Buddhist Group of Kendal (Theravada), viewed the embroidered panels with Karen Balmer, chaplaincy development officer for the Methodist Church, and visited the tearoom. Jacquetta helped to stitch one of the panels and is a member of the Quaker Tapestry.

Karen read a blessing by John O’Donoghue and Jacquetta read from His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s book Towards The True Kinship of Faiths: How The World’s Religions Can Come Together.

Kendal's Unitarian Chapel also held an evening of poetry, music and meditation.