Cardinal Truths

We had thought that, once it came to the questions in Durham last night, Cardinal Turkson would have to endure "AIDS in Africa". But that would have been a doddle. Instead, he was quizzed from the floor about the closure of Ushaw College. And his reply was masterful: you cannot expect to have enough vocations if you have such a low birthrate.

His Ghanaian accent was, in parts, almost West Indian, in the way that you can hear the old Cockney accent in that of Australia, or Ireland in that of working-class New York, or, as was very well-depicted on John Adams, the West Country in that of WASP New England.

And he bemoaned the EU's abandonment of its founders' Christian Democracy, going so far as to tell us that "If Pope John Paul II died with any pain in his heart, then it was at the failure of the EU Constitution to include any reference to the Christian roots of Western civilisation".