Sentamu is an intriguing, unclassifiable figure. I congratulate him on having been named Yorkshireman of the Year in 2008, but ask him again whether anyone outside the church is really listening. “We had the Yorkshire day in April and I was leading the procession,” he says, “and I’m told they had the biggest turnout they’ve ever had. The message about what makes a good community has to be heard, whether people are in church or not.”
The credit crunch has, he believes, changed everything. “Mammon was given a pasting. We may go back up to where we were, in the belief that now the markets are becoming more stable, but I’m not sure people really trust that any more. We’ve lived in this libertarian time where choice was seen as important and the free market was important, and as long as you did it within the law you could do whatever you wanted to. It’s now beginning to dawn on people that choice isn’t all there is about life. My neighbour matters.”