Canterbury Cathedral apologises after drugs story

CANTERBURY Cathedral has issued an apology after an investigation by The Sun suggested that traces of cocaine were discovered in visitor lavatories in the Precincts. The newspaper said on Monday that Canterbury was one of 11 out of 25 churches, including St Paul’s, and St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, where swabs taken from lavatory surfaces and floors tested positive for the drug. A spokeswoman for the cathedral, Jane Walker, said: “We are sorry to have been advised that cocaine was traced on one of the surfaces in the public toilet block . . . which are available to the one million people who visit Canterbury Cathedral every year. [They] are inspected regularly throughout the day, and there has been no evidence of repeated drug-use taking place in them.”

Schools allowed to focus on Christianity in RS classes

FRESH guidance on religious education issued this week by the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, says that schools can continue to prioritise the teaching of the main faiths over non-religious world-views such as humanism. The guidance was intended to clarify a recent judicial-review ruling on the new GCSE RE syllabus (News, 4 December). Mrs Morgan’s statement also reiterates the requirement that non-faith schools must reflect the fact that religious traditions in Britain are, in the main, Christian, while taking account of the other principal faiths. The clarification was welcomed by the Church of England’s chief education officer, the Revd Nigel Genders, who said that it would remove confusion after the judgment.

Correction. The two priests who slept out in a bus shelter decorated as a stable were the Revd Mike Cansdale, Vicar of Morton and Riddlesden, and his curate, the Revd Jenny Ramsden. The bus shelter is in East Morton, near Keighley, not Lincoln as we incorrectly reported. We apologise for the error.