From The Independent-Officially, there will be no political eulogy at Baroness Thatcher's funeral. But when the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, clambers up to the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral to deliver the sermon on Wednesday, there will be some who will be holding their breath to see what he comes out with.
For although, on the face of it, Dr Chartres is an archetypal establishment figure – a friend of Prince Charles and member of the Privy Council – he is also a maverick and a man of strong beliefs, some of them quite at odds with those of the late prime minister. Indeed, his name first entered public consciousness thanks to an altercation with Lady Thatcher. In 1982, as a junior chaplain to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, he wrote the controversial sermon for the Falklands thanksgiving service.
The thrust of it was that although war may be the lesser of two evils, it was always, in a sense, a failure. Runcie asked the congregation to pray for the dead of both sides and for Argentine, as well as British, mothers. The then Prime Minister was livid, and the sermon triggered a furious row between Downing Street and Lambeth Palace. Asked about the episode, in an interview in 2000, Chartres said he felt the decision was right, and that society requires triumphalism and hubris to be tempered.
More here-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-thatchers-funeral-maverick-bishops-sermon-will-not-be-vetted-by-no-10-8572220.html
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