Processions of Faith

March edition 2007 of the 'Capital Times' free news issued by the City Council carries a brief article on the local history exhibition running in the Old Library entitled 'Roots ot Cardiff. There's photograph of the 1911 Corpus Christi procession passing in front of the Castle, no doubt under the patronage of Lord Bute, a prominent Roman Catholic. Many of those processing through the streets then would have been Irish immigrants.

Today, another summer day religious procession passed by the castle. Hindu monks usually seen in small numbers singing and dancing their way along Queen Street or Working Street, singing 'Hare Krishna'. On this occasion they were surrounded by supporters, and pulling a large handcart with a tall and ornate tower shrine on it. This is the Rathayatra or chariot festival, originating 2000 years ago in Jagannatha Puri in Orissa, on India's East coast, and brought to the West in 1967 by the founder of the movement His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

They include devotees of both Western and Indian origin. As well as practising their worship on the streets, they are keen to explain and publicise their faith like any of the groups of Christian evangelists which appear. There are even Muslim preachers on Cardiff streets nowadays. All find a measure of public acceptance and tolerance. Public Corpus Christi processions moved off the streets into the Arms Park stadium in the 1980s, then into the Cardiff International Arena before ending for lack of support.

Sunday School Whitsun walks of witness amongst protestants fizzled out for lack of support in the seventies, in line with the phenomenal decline in Sunday School and church attendance. Around this time the slow erosion of religious contribution to life in the civic realm also began. When the administration of law and order was re-structured, Quarter Sessions were no longer marked with a procession from the Law Courts to a service in the Parish Church or anywhere else.

The Mayor, however, still has an honorary Chaplain to say prayers before Council meetings and devise services for special occasions - nowadays Interfaith occasions, sensitively assembled. Capital Times, March 2007 also reports on January's Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in City Hall. No matter how much some politicians and civil servants might find such religious and inter-religious occasions a personal imposition, they express a need for rituals that bind citizens and their representatives together. Events of this nature have evolved in the light of social change, but don't fit comfortably with some perceptions of modernity. Tradition is something to be negotiated with.