On Tuesday 17^th May 2016, Dr Ed Kessler, Fellow of St Edmund’s College, took part in the ceremony at Westminster College with Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Lord Woolf, Dr Atif Imitaz (pictured with Dr Kessler), Academic Director of the Cambridge Muslim College and Revd Neil Thorogood, Principal of Westminster College.

Dr Kessler, Founder Director of The Woolf Institute which has an academic agreement with St Edmund’s, welcomed guests from as far away as Argentina, Israel and the United States. He said that the ceremony was taking place at the end of a remarkable meeting between Catholic and Jewish theologians hosted by the Woolf Institute, co-chaired with Cardinal Koch.  This meeting, which considered the future agenda of Catholic-Jewish relations, epitomised his hopes for the new building.  “To be a realist”, he said, “you need to believe in miracles.  This building is a miracle.  So is the miraculous change in Jewish-Christian relations which has become a new reality and points one way forward for other encounters”.  For his part, the Cardinal who co-celebrated mass at St Edmund’s College earlier the same day with the Dean, congratulated everybody associated with the new building and talked of the urgency of the interfaith and ecumenical endeavour.