WARNING — contains some scenes of graphic puppet violence

Notice on Rochester Cathedral website advertising a retelling of Beowulf, to be performed on 7 August

Church groups are commandeering the reparations discourse, controlling the financial settlements and, ultimately, letting down the descendants of enslaved peoples

Robert Beckford, theologian and broadcaster, The Guardian, 4 June

See in the migrants of our time, as in those of every age, a living image of God’s people on their way to the eternal homeland

Pope Francis, Message for the 110th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 3 June

This [immigration] is another area that needs to stop being kicked around like a political football. . . I want to ask questions about why are people leaving their countries. Is it war? Is it to do with famine? Is it climate change?. . . And how can we, as an international group, resolve this problem. If we don’t address that at its root, people are going to keep moving

Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, Question Time, BBC1, 30 May

Here in this country we’re asking nurses in particular to pay for their own training. This is a necessity. They ought to be able to be trained and equipped to look after those who are most vulnerable in our society. Actually, I thought that there was £350 million per week that was going to come into the health system. What happened to it?

ibid.

The deselection of David Campanale [Letters, 24 May, 31 May] on the grounds of his beliefs alone is shockingly illiberal. On this basis Gladstone wouldn’t have been allowed to stand in Sutton & Cheam

Philip Mounstephen, Bishop of Winchester, X/Twitter, 1 June

The Church seems to be unusually smitten with this success culture, because we too are desperate to repair the fortunes of our failing institution, where the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of corporate jargon. So we go as supplicants to boardroom heavyweights, forgetting that our job is not to emulate them but to be ambassadors for a kingdom not of this world

Richard Coles, priest, The Sunday Times, 2 June

He is a passionate supporter of Bolton Wanderers (having been born in Bolton) and (not unrelatedly) has an interest in live comedy

Downing Street announcement that Dr Mike Harrison is to be the next Bishop of Exeter, 4 June

We invite readers’ contributions. Quotations have to be from the past few days (or quoted therein), and we need author, source, and date. Please send promptly to: quotes@churchtimes.co.uk