Some 82 per cent of the population are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church, with the next largest tranche of faith being the 10 per cent who count themselves Muslim.<\/p>\n
Such a devout populace might have expected a unified condemnation of an attack on such a solid and venerable household of faith.<\/p>\n
Pope Benedict XVI managed, from his holiday in the Italian Alps, to call for an “immediate” end to hostilities in South Ossetia and urged negotiations between Russia and Georgia over the contested province.<\/p>\n
But it sounded like a rebuke to two squabbling children, not a plea for an end to a bloodbath, and carefully made no reference to the wider incursion into Georgia.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, there has been a resounding chorus of silence in the cloisters. Nothing from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the latter vociferous in his condemnation of Robert Mugabe’s aggressions in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
Nothing from the Anglican Communion, so keen of late to re-engage on the international stage with its march through London in solidarity with the world’s poor.<\/p>\n