compartmentalise religion between 9 and 5 and then you can be religious again - well it just doesn't function like that. So I think it's perhaps that lived religion - and I think that's what a lot of politicians and ministers get - that they appreciate the role that religion plays in an individual's life as opposed to it being something remote that you study from a book.

Catholic schools? Aside from the schools in Gaza I have stayed away from education. I touched on it a little bit in relation to the Millennium Development Goals but by and large in the conduct of this relationship between the UK and the Holy See there is a domestic dimension to it which is dealt with by the Catholic Church in this country in its contact with the government. Now it's not a strict separation but you would be completely overwhelmed if you started getting involved in domestic issues. From time to time of course domestic issues do come onto your table but by and large I tend to leave issues of domestic legislation, that's between the government and the local Catholic Church as opposed to the Holy See and the United Kingdom government, and education would be one of those areas that by and large we would leave to that level. Finding one's way between the hierarchy and the grassroots church? Every organisation has this dynamic, and I don't know an organisation that doesn't have it. Years ago, I studied political science - I didn't study business administration, but I studied in the United States and the group I stayed with were business school students and they were all preparing for Wall Street but they were interested in two things: How do you get market share and how do you achieve longevity in business? And they were looking at Warren Buffet and all these characters. And there's something about the structure - you know, to be an Italian Catholic is something very different from an Ethiopian Catholic or to be an Anglican in Nigeria is very different from being an Episcopalian, or being a Shia Muslim in Iran or being a Shia Muslim in Toronto. But yet there's something that keeps the thing together. I've watched it over the last four and a half years. I mentioned subsidiarity before and I was fascinated that you can have this global structure harbouring so much diversity. Now there's tension in there and there'd be tension in any structure. I tried to figure out how has this been achieved? - actually the governance model is fascinating because it's centralised in very very few areas. It's centralised to appoint the bishops, doctrine and the office of the Papacy and nearly everything else is decentralised and sometimes really right down to parish level and yet how do you keep all that together despite the culture and things that go on? So - I'd say I'd agree with your point about the different areas of the world and the different roles the churches play in it and what the Vatican is. But somehow it's a comfortable model with that tension, at some times it's perhaps rather less comfortable than at others but for some reason I'd say if I were tempted at a certain stage to look to do a research project, I think it would be on the governance model of Catholicism and how it has survived and how it has adapted - because it has adapted, there have been huge adaptations over the years and yet it's managed to survive and become th in the 20 century truly global. It's one of the things you notice now with the three countries that have the largest Catholic populations, they are in the Americas, they are not in Europe: it's Brazil followed by Mexico followed by the United States and the second largest number of cardinals is the Americans, just after the Italians - so it's a changing picture yet the structures adapt.