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Some news. I’m stepping down from drawing cartoons for the Church Times.

I drew my first cartoon for the Church Times (CT) in 2004, and then regularly from spring 2005 onwards, and I’ve been drawing them every week for 21 years, admittedly with a few breaks, including quite a lot of the last year. If you laid all of these cartoons end to end you’d have nine books-worth, plus a few extras.

Being offered the chance to contribute a regular weekly cartoon to the CT by the then editor Paul Handley, in 2005, gave me the opportunity to attempt to make a career of it, for which I will always be immensely grateful. None of the cycling or other work that I’ve done would have come about had it not been for that. And many of you will have discovered my work via the CT drawings.

I’ve decided the time has now come to step away from drawing my Church Times cartoons. I’m not going to write about the reasons, except that it’s been necessary, my own choice, and not an easy decision.

I know there will be some people who will be disappointed about this, and I’m sorry.

It has been a privilege to contribute a regular cartoon to the CT for more than two decades. I have only good things to say about the editors of the paper, firstly Paul, and then since 2024 Sarah Meyrick. Also Ed Thornton, who has commissioned my work for the last year or two. They’ve always been responsive to my ideas, supportive and patient, even when (understatement) I haven’t been the easiest contributor to manage. 

I always encouraged people to send me ideas for cartoons, partly because I needed all the help I could get, but also because combined knowledge and ideas are always stronger than one person’s alone. So thank you to the many people who have done so, and to everyone who has supported me with comments, emails and whathaveyou while I’ve been a Church Times cartoonist.

If you’re in the church world please consider supporting excellent journalism by subscribing to the CT. There are many reasons to do so, but from the viewpoint of someone who believes that cartoons still have something to contribute: the paper has an almost unique commitment to the art of cartooning. Typically you’ll find 3 or 4 commissioned cartoons every week, which is highly unusual for a publication these days. 

As for my own work: If you’d like to keep in touch with what I’m doing then subscribing to my Diagram Club newsletter is the best way to do so. It contains my best work and a bit of everything I do, along with, it must be said, a certain amount of nonsense. It appears approximately every seven days, and the free version (hopefully) contains plenty to boost your morale on an unspecified day of the week. There’s a paid version too, with some more ‘behind the scenes’ content.

If my church-themed work specifically interests you, then the nine aforementioned books all continue to be available. You’ll also find many of the Church Times cartoons from the last 21 years on my CartoonChurch website, and there’s more on the way. Licences to reuse the work in your church publications are available on a ‘pay what you can afford’ basis. If you’re on Facebook follow the CartoonChurch page to see the cartoons in your feed.

Lastly, I have a new project, currently in development, involving my writing, drawing, and bicycles. Once again my newsletter will be the best place to hear more about that, very soon.

Thanks again for all your support – please keep in touch. 

Dave

The post My Church Times cartoons appeared first on Dave Walker.

BARCELONA, June 11 — Six-sevening crowds and joking about Bad Bunny, AI and football rivalries — 70-year-old Pope Leo XIV has appealed to a younger crowd during his visit to Spain as part of his efforts to revive the Catholic Church.

On popemobile rides, the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics has frequently been seen doing the 6-7 hand gesture — a reference to a meme that has spread widely on social media and is popular with teens.

Along with the masses and institutional events, there have also been multiple meetings with young people where the pope has used more down-to-earth language and spoken about topical issues like mental health.

The pontiff, fluent in Spanish, also held a private meeting with Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny, just after addressing a crowd of 80,000 people at Real Madrid’s famed Bernabeu stadium.

On the plane to Madrid, the pope had joked about facing competition from Bad Bunny who was giving concerts in the Spanish capital at the same time.

“If they are confronted with the question ‘Do you want to go see Bad Bunny or do you want to go to see the pope?’ I think many will see Bad Bunny.

“But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something,” he told reporters.

‘Spontaneous moments’ 

“He’s clearly making an effort to reach out to young people,” said US Vatican expert Elise Ann Allen, who has written a biography of the pope.

But she said there were also many “spontaneous moments” — like when the football-mad pope confessed to reporters that he was a supporter of Real Madrid, not Barcelona.

“I think these are just the pope being himself,” she said.

On the flight from Madrid to Barcelona, the pope rode part of the way in the cockpit — visibly enjoying himself and waving out of the window to a fighter jet accompanying the plane.

He joked with the pilots, according to video released by the Spanish carrier, Iberia.

When one of the pilots told him he was a fan of Real Madrid, whose players wear white shirts, the pope responded: “I’m all in white. In Barcelona you have to be careful.”

The pope has spoken about the challenges and opportunities of the digital age for the young and devoted his first encyclical — a sort of papal manifesto — to artificial intelligence.

He joked about AI’s limitations with an anecdote at a lunch in Madrid, where he told guests that he had asked AI before his visit what he should say to Spanish bishops.

“The artificial intelligence told him that ‘Pope Francis would say’... so he stopped it and said: ‘I think there’s another pope’,” Yago de la Cierva, coordinator of the papal visit, told reporters.

“Then the artificial intelligence said, ‘Ah, that’s right, it’s now Pope Leo.’”

In his speech to Spanish bishops, he urged them to “build a new reality through respectful dialogue and the use of new languages” to evangelise, urging them to recognise young people’s “search for meaning”.

‘Listens to young people’ 

“I think this pope listens a lot to young people,” said Alejandra Landae, a 28-year-old Mexican student in Barcelona, as she waited Wednesday near the Sagrada Familia basilica to see Pope Leo XIV.

Jose Maria Romero, a 20-year-old student from Seville who was also waiting nearby, agreed, saying the pope “is trying to unite young people”.

Allen said more and more young people were taking an interest in the Catholic Church.

“There’s something stirring in the waters, and he sees that and he wants to take advantage of it,” she said.

Rafael Ruiz, professor of sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, told El Pais daily that recent surveys showed a rise of Catholicism among younger Spaniards.

“We do not know whether this is a Catholic resurgence or simply a stabilisation of the secularisation process,” he said.

“What we are seeing more clearly is an increase in the visibility of Catholicism and in the normalisation of Catholicism among young people,” he said.

Around 56 per cent of Spaniards identify as Catholic compared to 90 percent in the 1970s, according to a survey last month by the Centre for Sociological Research, an autonomous government body.

An opinion piece in Spanish daily La Vanguardia said the pope was “making God fashionable”. — AFP

Richard Forensky posted a photo:

Richard Forensky posted a photo:

Richard Forensky posted a photo:

Andri Kyrychok posted a photo:

Andri Kyrychok posted a photo:

Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested that imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai is unlikely to be released, US President Donald Trump said Friday.

Asked about the fate of political prisoners in China following a high-stakes summit in Beijing, Trump said that Xi would “strongly” consider the release of a pastor of an underground church, but that freeing Lai was a “tough one for him to do.”

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One, Trump said of Lai’s fate: “I did bring him up, it’s a tougher one for him, it’s a tougher one.”

Trump added: “He told me, Jimmy Lai is a tough one for him to do.”

Lai, the 78-year-old founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, was found guilty in December on charges of foreign collusion and seditious publication and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The sentence was the harshest penalty doled out so far under a national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing after widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019 and received international condemnation.

Trump added Friday that Xi promised “He’s going to strongly consider the pastor,” referring to Jin Mingri, the founder of a prominent Chinese underground church detained in October in a sweeping national crackdown.

Jin founded the unregistered Zion Church in 2007 in Beijing. It grew to 1,500 members before shuttering in 2018 under pressure from Chinese authorities.

But the church maintained an online presence that flourished during the Covid pandemic, amassing a following across 40 Chinese cities.

Jin was arrested on October 10 on “suspicion of the illegal use of information networks.”

Eric Lai, senior fellow at Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said that while it was clear that Jimmy Lai’s case was not a priority at the summit, it was still significant that Trump raised it.

“Obviously, the CCP does not compromise on its perception of regime security and they have never changed their attitudes and positioning towards Jimmy Lai and his imprisonment,” he said referring to China’s Communist Party.

“That said, it is also evident that international attention and internal pressure in US society remains essential to the US government keeping an agenda on Jimmy Lai alongside other political prisoners in China,” he added.

Andri Kyrychok posted a photo: