In the course of this week, Erik Varden, Bishop of Trondheim in Norway, has been giving a retreat to Pope Leo and officials of the Roman Curia in the “Pauline Chapel” in the Vatican. Bishop Varden, who undertook secular and theological studies in Cambridge and in Rome, was previously Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard’s, near Leicester, in England. Pope Francis appointed him Bishop in his home country of Norway in 2019.
Bishop Varden, who has extensively published online on his website and in print in numerous languages, was appointed in 2026 as the preacher of the annual Vatican retreat. We will give more details about the retreat, which is still in progress, next week. (Texts of the addresses given so far can already be found here.) For now, we draw your attention, by way of introduction to Bishop Varden, to his sermon last year on Ash Wednesday:
“We are, as Paul says, ‘God’s collaborators’. We know ourselves, so have reason to reflect: this is a pretty daring move on God’s part. It’s how he works. His faith in us is staggering. Do we show ourselves worthy of it? ‘Turn to me with an undivided heart’, says the Lord — only to add that a heart, to be whole, must first be broken in repentance. ‘Now is the favourable time’. This is the day of salvation, if we let it be. We carry great responsibility.”