The Paddington paradox

With a tip of his hat, he brings a trace of grace to every life he touches.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A cartoon bear, wearing a blue duffel coat and red hat, rests his arms on a rock against a mountainous background

Paddington ponders Peru.

StudioCanal.

It appears that Paddington, the nation’s favourite unaccompanied asylum-seeking bear, has finally been issued with a British Passport, 66 years after stowing away on a boat from South America and two years after eating marmalade sandwiches with Queen Elizabeth II on her Platinum Jubilee. In the brand-new film Paddington in Peru, we discover what happens when he uses his passport to return to his country of birth to visit his old Aunt Lucy.

Will Paddington be reunited with the kind-hearted bear who brought him up after he was orphaned in an earthquake? Where will this leave the Brown family, who have been fostering him for the best part of seven decades? Indeed, where will it leave the rest of us who have embraced Paddington as one of our own? Will Paddington even return to 32 Windsor Gardens, London?

It is not only his address and passport that evidence Paddington’s Britishness. This bear, who has captured the hearts of children and adults alike, has become as quintessential a British icon as Harry Potter and James Bond. This despite his Latino heritage, his status as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking bear, as well as his vast array of cultural faux pas. His earnestness, modesty, curiosity and unfailingly polite manners more than compensate, it seems, for his frequent dramatic mishaps and his uncertain immigration status. With a tip of his hat, he brings a trace of grace to every life he touches – from refuse collectors to antique collectors, from convicted criminals to window cleaners. Everywhere he goes chaos is met by kindness, compassion and positive transformation.

Paddington seems to typify the best of what Britain stands for. Everything about his story is a celebration of the power of British hospitality. His creator, Michael Bond CBE, was inspired by the incredible hospitality of the people of wartime Britain who gave sanctuary to evacuee children in the Blitz as well as the families that provided loving homes for Jewish children fleeing the Nazis via the Kinder Transport in 1939. He once told a reporter:

“We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of the fire every evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck”.

Aunt Lucy in the first Paddington movie makes this connection most clearly. She reassures Paddington who is nervous about what awaits him at the end of his dangerous journey, saying:

“Long ago, people in England sent their children by train with labels around their necks, so they could be taken care of by complete strangers in the countryside where it was safe. They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers.”

Despite the xenophobia that frequently comes across in our media, there are many Great British people who haven’t forgotten how to treat strangers.

I wish I was as confident as Aunt Lucy about our country’s memory. When I watch the news and hear the anti-immigration rhetoric from some of our politicians, I fear that too many people in Great Britain have forgotten how to treat strangers.

The Bible recognises the enormous potential for amnesia on this issue. In its first five books there are no less than 36 reminders to welcome the stranger: hospitality was always supposed to be a priority of personal and national identity. Later on in the Bible we are shown what this looks like by Jesus, who welcomed the sort of strangers nobody else had time for – the poor, the downcast, the marginalised, the vulnerable, the sick, the homeless, the forgotten, the unpopular and the ethnically suspect. Finally, towards the end of the Bible there is another reminder in the book of Hebrews:

“Don’t forget to welcome strangers.”

Despite the xenophobia that frequently comes across in our media, there are many Great British people who haven’t forgotten how to treat strangers. Tens of thousands of families have made rooms available to Ukrainians fleeing war over the past three years. Churches and charities and communities and schools and workplaces seem to have a wonderful habit of embracing those who are different, or who need a helping hand.

This is what I call the Paddington Paradox: despite all the talk of tightening our borders, and reducing immigration, despite a summer of racist riots and yet another spike in hate crime cases, despite growing pressures on limited housing supply, and cost-of-living-related struggles, we love to think of our country as a hospitable one. We celebrate the welcoming of strangers – from the Kinder Transport to the Homes For Ukraine scheme. One of our most beloved national treasures is an asylum-seeker, albeit also a fictional bear.

This week is my foster son’s birthday and so I am taking him and some of his friends to the cinema to see Paddington in Peru. To my surprise nearly all his friends’ parents have asked to come too! We are all looking forward to seeing how Paddington and the Brown family fare as they make a perilous journey on a small boat into the Amazon rainforest, and are forced to rely, once again, on the kindness of strangers.

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Belief

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7 May 2025

4 min read

Why does the Pope matter today?

The personal, vivid link to the origins of the movement that changed the world.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

An Anglican bishop wearing purple shakes hands with the Pope.

The author meeting the late Pope, 2024.

There is something about the way popes are elected that captures the imagination. Whoever dreamt up the idea of black smoke for ‘no decision’, and white smoke for ‘habemus papam’ – ‘we have a new pope’ - was a genius at marketing. So much better than a press release or a tweet from the Vatican X account.

The conclave was brought to our imagination so vividly by the recent film with Ralph Fiennes. We love the idea of secret debates, intrigue, people locked away from the world until they come to a decision with arcane ancient rituals and an uncertain outcome. Was there ever a film whose release was better timed?

There are also the sheer numbers involved. There are approximately 1.4 billion Catholics in the world today – roughly the same as the population of India and China, the world most populous nations. Yet the identity of the new pope is of matters to the rest of us too. The leader of China of India is of interest especially to people living in China or India, but maybe less so for those of us who don’t. The new pope is the head of churches round the corner from where you live, or of people with whom you work, or, if you are Catholic yourself, your own spiritual leader. This appointment matters.

Yet it’s not just the optics, the drama, the numbers. And it’s not just for Catholics either. I am an Anglican, and since the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we have had in our own 39 Articles the statement: “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” That might seem to settle the matter that it’s of no interest to English Protestants. But that would be wrong.

I met Pope Francis once. It was at a gathering of Anglican Archbishops in Rome last year. We all were led through magnificent Vatican corridors into an imposing state room, adorned with fantastic frescoes, where the white-robed Holy Father was brought in on his wheelchair to deliver a brief 20-minute homily to us all.

It was a good talk, thoughtful, well-constructed, but in many ways unremarkable. It didn’t say anything much that I hadn’t heard from other sources. Yet somehow this was different. His words carried a weight, a gravity that went beyond the content of the lecture itself. It was as if, when he entered that room, he carried with him two thousand years of church history.

The line of Bishops of Rome goes back to St Peter, the gruff, unschooled fisherman who Jesus called from his mundane life to become an apostle, and who then on, was so captured by the person of Jesus that he gave his life in the cause. I left that room conscious of the weight of the office of the papacy, even if I don’t recognise him as my direct spiritual father.

Listening to this successor of St Peter felt like you were listening to one of the friends of Jesus – and this was not just the personal quality of the man himself, but something about the office he occupied. It was a personal, vivid link to the origins of the Christian movement, the first stirrings of the revolution.

The papacy is one of those unique things in modern life - an umbilical link to the past.

Of course, there have been some pretty terrible occupants of the papal see, whose personal lives showed scant evidence of any knowledge of, or relationship with Jesus. The sixteenth century Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) comes to mind, who despite the rule on clerical celibacy, had several children from various mistresses, won the Papacy by bribing cardinals, and made his favourite son bishop of several lucrative sees at the age of eighteen, and a cardinal at nineteen. So, there is nothing automatic about this – which is why the Protestant Reformers denied the idea of any blanket automatic papal authority.

Yet when a person of evident holiness is combined with this notion of the weight of the office, the papacy becomes a gift to all of us, linking us back to the earliest followers of Jesus – even to Jesus himself.

The papacy is one of those unique things in modern life - an umbilical link to the past. Monarchies do something similar – linking us to the past through the long line of kings and queens of England, Denmark, Spain or wherever, yet more often than not, the events they lead us back to, the process by which those families took power, reveal murky politics, bribery and bloody battles.

This is a line in history that links us to the event that, if Tom Holland’s Dominion is to be believed, has had more impact in shaping western culture than any other – the remarkable life, death and resurrection of Jesus – a radical life full of love, self-giving and transformative power – for both individuals and whole civilisations. And for that, whether we are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or even, perhaps, unbeliever, we might raise a prayer - or a glass - of thanksgiving.