The 2026 Anthony Storey Memorial Lecture took place online on Wednesday May 13th.
Sir John Battle spoke on “Hope in Turbulent Times”
The full text for this lecture can be found below.
Fr Anthony Storey
Sir John Battle
HOPE IN TURBULENT TIMES
The 2026 Storey Lecture
by Sir John Battle
Thank you for inviting me to speak at this lecture in honour of Fr. Storey, a priest with a national reputation of building communities, working with young people and a strong commitment to Catholic social teaching and working for justice and peace.
By way of introduction, I have the privilege of serving the people of West Leeds as their MP from 1987 to 2010. I presently chair our Leeds Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission, but also have the privilege of serving as a retired volunteer in our local New Wortley community project in our West Leeds community. This is an area still sadly with some of the highest indices of deprivation in the country, not least with young people’s unemployment levels and the challenges of mental health. It is also my own catholic parish neighbourhood.
When Barbara and I discussed the theme for tonight back at the beginning of March, the language of “hope in turbulent times” seems to have lifted off with regular media references to the word “turbulent”, not least in present politics from President Trump’s changing tweets, to our own local elections and government’s political turmoil. Even the football season is now said to have a “turbulent ending”.
The word “turbulent” comes from a Latin root word “turbo” meaning basically “crowd”, and referring to the “chaos of crowds”. In mediaeval times, it was simply translated as “trouble”.
Of course, it’s commonly used in aircraft turbulence where there are four levels for pilots; light, moderate, severe, and extreme. So while football turbulence is light, it’s tempting to insist that the much overlooked report this week from the United Nations that continued closure of the Straits of Hormuz will, in just a few months time, lead to some 45 million deaths in poor countries through hunger and starvation, that’s extreme turbulence that deserve serious attention.
We are in a common home and rather than live as a riot of a crowd we are invited to follow the gospel imperative of Jesus to become God’s people as brothers and sisters in that common home.
In Book VIII of his “Confessions”, Saint Augustine describes hearing a child’s voice chanting the phrase “Tolle et Lege” ” Take up and read”, which inspires him to open Saint Paul’s Epistle find a passage from Romans (13:13) that leads to his conversion to Christianity. “Tolle et Lege” is his motto for Christian growth.
Notably, Pope Leo in his memoir to Bishop Marcus regarding our diocese future reorganisations stress the need to “study and reflect” in the light of the Holy Spirit.
Peter Roebuck’s inspiring biography of Fr Storey “A Priest for His Time” tells us that Storey was throughout his life a great reader and he kept close to him all his life two key books; the 12th century Abbot of Rievaulx ,St Aelred’s “Spiritual Friendship” and the post Freudian psychotherapist , Eric Fromm’s The Art of Loving”(1957).
And we learn that at the end of his long ministry Storey died working on a book he was to “Relationship”.
Reflecting Storey’s life experience of proclaiming and practising the gospel in community we can rediscover some resources for hoping in our current turbulent times.
This week13-20 May has been declared as the week ” A Million acts of Hope”, of everyday acts of kindness, a charity charity organisations initiative . ” to combat the chilling effect of hostile narratives on civil society.”. In 1980 Dom Helder Camara of Brazil wrote ” A 1000 Reasons for Living” again celebrating reasons for hoping.
Can we tell good news stories instead of bad ones?
we need to remind ourselves that the keyword” HOPING “. It is an active verb not to be flattened down to an abstract noun or concept or reduced to feelings of optimism. Rather hope should be expressed in terms of a “doing” word to be practiced, that is to be shared with others.
And the source of” our hoping” is of course the biblical story of our salvation the call of God to become “my people”, the liberation from Egypt in the Exodus, culminating in the Resurrection of the Risen Christ we are celebrating this Easter csan and now with the sent support of the Holy Spirit.