This chapel, an upper room adjacent to the Pack Horse Hotel, served the small Catholic community in Leeds for several years, until a purpose-built chapel, St Mary’s, opened in Lady Lane in October 1794. By 1833 the Dominicans had handed over the responsibility for the Leeds Mission to the Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District, Bishop Thomas Penswick, who appointed Fr Henry Walmsley to St Mary’s. At this time the Catholic population of Leeds was growing rapidly as a result of the town’s economic development and the influx of settlers from Ireland.

  In 1836 a site for a new church in the town centre to replace St Mary’s was found. This church, designed by a local architect, John Child, opened on 24th October 1838. It was dedicated to St Anne in honour of Anne Humble, the late sister of Grace and Sarah Humble the principal benefactors of the new church, which stood at the junction of Guildford Street (the present Headrow) and Cookridge Street.

  St Anne’s was raised to Cathedral status on 20th December 1878 upon the creation of the Diocese of Leeds. Twenty years later Leeds Corporation announced plans for the development of this part of Leeds, which involved the demolition of the Cathedral. Having considered various possible sites it was decided to accept the Corporation’s offer of land just yards from the existing church, at the junction of Cookridge Street and Great George Street.

  Construction of the present Cathedral began in the autumn of 1901 and was completed in the early part of 1904. The architect was John Henry Eastwood (1843-1913) from London, who had been born near Leeds. He in turn engaged the services of a talented assistant, Sydney Kyffin Greenslade (1866-1955). Together they produced an outstanding design in the Arts and Crafts neo-Gothic style with an unusual layout to accommodate the Cathedral’s relatively small city centre site. It was consecrated by Bishop Cowgill on 18th July, 1924.

  A first stage in this, when it comes (for example) to disputations with the Jews over their view of Christianity as a recently-founded syncretizing heresy of Judaism, is to decide what Scripture is and what it says. If I argue from my books and you argue from yours, we will never meet; but if we share an agreed foundation, there is some chance. Accordingly Origen compiled a vast synopsis of the different versions of the Old Testament, called the Hexapla. Not all Origen’s specific judgements on soundness were generally accepted, even at the time, but the principle remains a necessary one, indispensable for any constructive meeting of minds.

  Origen’s principle of interpretation of Scripture is that as well as having a literal meaning, its laws, stories and narratives point us to eternal and spiritual truths. The prime purpose of Scripture is to convey spiritual truth, and the narrative of historical events is secondary to this. While we still accept that “Scripture provides us with the truths necessary for salvation”, this view does leave room for over-interpretation by the unscrupulous, and in the controversies of succeeding centuries people would either claim Origen as an authority for their own interpretations or accuse their opponents of Origenizing away the plain truths of Scripture. Even today, the literalist view taken by some heretics of narratives in Genesis which most of us accept as allegorical shows that this controversy will never die.

  As part of his programme of founding everything on Scripture, Origen produced voluminous commentaries – too many of them for the copyists to keep up, so that today some of them have perished. But what remains has definite value, and extracts from his commentaries and also his sermons are used as some of our Second Readings in the Office of Readings.

  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.