Even by the standards of Irish stately homes, Dromantine is a splendid pile, set in many acres of rolling green parkland. If its mighty stone walls could speak, they would have much to say about inter-Christian squabbles. In the days of the original, Scottish Protestant, owners, a Roman priest would rarely have darkened their doors, although most locals are Catholic. This all changed after the first world war: the house was bought by the Catholic Church and became a place which few Protestants cared to enter. Everything is much easier now, of course. The house's Catholic managers, many of them ex-missionaries from Africa, are bursting with enthusiasm for ecumenical encounters. So they were delighted when more than 30 prelates of the Anglican Communion, the spiritual leaders of 77m Christians from all over the world, spent a week with them. As their purple-robed guests stretched points and tried to bridge the almost unbridgeable, the smiles on the faces of their black-suited hosts seemed to widen.
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