Today in 1945, at 8.15am local time, the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by a B29 Superfortress bomber (above) of the United States, immediately killing an estimated 70 to 80,000 people. The bomb exploded some 600 metres (1,970 feet) above the centre of Hiroshima, totally destroying everything within a one-mile radius. The Catholic chaplain assigned to the atomic bomb group on Tinian island, George Zabelka, who had pastoral care for the air crews, was later horrified by the bombings and was converted to a non-violent reading of the message of Jesus. He led a peace pilgrimage from Hiroshima to Nagasaki on the 40th anniversary of their destruction, as a way of seeking forgiveness for his and the Church’s complicity in these war crimes.
‘I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of a censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching and destroyed His world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process, begun with Constantine, reached its lowest point — so far.’ George Zabelka, 1980
Tonight in 1978, at 9.41pm, Paul VI, the Pope of the 1960s and 70s, died after suffering a heart attack at Castel Gandolfo, the summer villa of the Popes south of Rome. He was declared to be a saint 40 years later.
‘About the funeral: May it be pious and simple. May the catafalque now in use for pontifical funeral rites be substituted by a humble and decorous contrivance. The tomb: I would like to be in real earth, with a humble marker indicating the place and asking for Christian mercy. No monument for me.’ Last will and testament of Pope Paul VI
Tonight in 1941, at 7.45pm, at the height of the Second World War, CS Lewis sat down at a microphone in the BBC in London to give his first ever radio talk. He gave 25 talks in all, delivering the final broadcast in 1944. The complete series made the case for believing in God, and then for believing in the Christian faith. Lewis spoke in a familiar way, sounding like an uncle talking to a favourite nephew, breaking down complex ideas to fit his time limit. He said later, ’If you are allowed to talk for only ten minutes, pretty well everything else has to be sacrificed to brevity.’ The series was published in 1952 as Mere Christianity, the most famous and best-read apologetics book in English of the 20th century.
Matthew Parker was born today in 1504. Elizabeth I chose him as her first Archbishop of Canterbury, although he was reluctant to take the job. He was a moderate, and had been the favourite chaplain of Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn. Parker masterminded the production of the Bishops’ Bible (1568), which was beautifully printed with large illustrations, but was overshadowed by the publication of the King James Bible in 1611.
‘Is there not treacle at Gilead?’ Jeremiah 8:22 as translated by the Bishops’ Bible, which gave rise to its popular nickname, the Treacle Bible
Today is the feast of the transfiguration, celebrating a mystical episode which appears in three of the four Gospels. Jesus took his innermost circle of disciples, Peter, James and John, to the top of a high mountain, where ‘his clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.’ Moses and Elijah, long-dead prophets from the Old Testament, appeared and talked with Jesus, and a voice from a cloud completed the experience.
Image: US Air Force