| TERMINAL FIVE, Heathrow, which has opened at a cost of £4.3 billion, amid scenes of chaos, still had no functioning chapel for the first passengers on Thursday of last week.
“At the moment, it’s just an empty room. There are prayer mats there, but no kneelers. The lectern and altar are not ready, but the direction of Mecca is indicated,” Fr Pascal Ryan, the Roman Catholic priest involved in its planning, said.
Despite the lack of a dedicated Christian chapel as in the new airports at Brussels and Paris, Fr Ryan said that he was determined to be positive about the new facility. “It’s bigger than a broom cupboard. It’s about five metres wide by ten metres long. It has no view.” It would eventually be equipped with an altar-table and lectern, and cupboards for robes, books, prayer mats, and devotional material.
There would be an official opening once the room had been in use for some time. “We want people to have got used to it being there. This is the first time BAA have incorporated a multifaith prayer room in one of their buildings from the start. They have also provided a room for counselling and an office, and so they have included provision for chaplaincy from the start. That is a significant step,” he said.
The Archdeacon of Northolt, the Ven. Rachel Treweek, chairs the St George’s Chapel Trust, which oversees the interdenominational chapel near Terminal Two, which will be 40 years old in November. She said that the new Terminal was like a small town. “And if it was a new town, we would be building a church in it.”
But she was pleased that BAA had backed plans for a new faith charity, funded by the airlines, to improve interfaith chaplaincy at the airport. A management reference body that BAA had “just agreed to”, it would bring together representatives of the many faiths and Christian traditions that provided chaplains. It would be able to speak to BAA on their behalf, and BAA could use it as a point of contact. “Hopefully it could attract funding from many different airlines,” Archdeacon Treweek said. |
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