BY Ian Dunn | May 16 | 
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St John Paul II named as patron of Glasgow arts project
The Glasgow Archdiocesan Arts Project (AGAP) has made St John Paul II its patron saint.
The popular arts group, which organises the Lentfest festival and other arts events during the year, received permission from Glasgow Archdiocese for the move.
AGAP Director Stephen Callaghan said that though the ‘canonisation of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II was a cause for great celebration among Catholics and people of faith world-wide,’ for AGAP, ‘it was also a unique opportunity to cement our relationship with the playwright-pope who inspired the project from its very beginnings’.
“It was the Scottish premiers of two plays written by Karol Wojtyla (St John Paul II) at Turnbull Hall Catholic Chaplaincy which laid the foundations for the project,” he said. “As a student of theatre, film and television studies in my senior honour year, it was a great privilege for me to direct these plays and to witness the effect that they had.”
Those earlier productions were mounted with the support of University Catholic Chaplain, now Bishop John Keenan of Paisley.
Mr Callgahn said that ‘as a result of these plays, a dialogue began with Mario Conti, now Archbishop-Emeritus of Glasgow, about how we might take forward this kind of work’.
“The result of that dialogue was AGAP and, almost eight years on, we continue to be inspired by the example of St John Paul II, whose universal appeal to all people of good faith and whose belief in the ‘vocation of the artist’ are what shapes the life of the project,” he said.
—This story ran in full in the May 16 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.
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