Churches not cross at the crossing

The Northwest is the United Kingdom's 'academopolis', boasting the highest concentration of students in Europe. Harriet Swain and Alison Utley look at how institutions are working to give the region's economy a boost.

A busy road runs through the middle of Liverpool Hope University College, dividing the old Catholic institutions of Christ's College and Notre Dame from the Anglican St Katharine's.

On one side is the circular Catholic church, on the other the plain Anglican chapel. Accommodation blocks on the left cater mainly for Catholic students, those on the right for Anglicans. Several times a day these students must launch themselves in front of the traffic to cross over to the student union or the refectory.

But reconciling divisions is a source of pride to Liverpool Hope. So devoted is it to ecumenism that when the author Alice Thomas Ellis recently accused the late Archbishop of Liverpool of weakening Catholic faith by working too closely with Anglicans, the college took out a full-page advert in the Catholic Herald in his defence.

Its ecumenism is not restricted just to Christianity. Located in a traditionally Jewish suburb of south Liverpool, the college has students of all religions, and provides a Muslim prayer room within the body of its Catholic church.

Soon the geography of the campus will better reflect this. The plan is to develop traffic calming measures on the main road - no mean feat - to create a more unified Hope Park campus.

Key to the complex will be a new library, already under construction, to be named the Sheppard/Worlock Library after Liverpool's two best-known religious reconcilers.

The end of the pairing of Derek Worlock, the late Catholic archbishop, and David Sheppard, who retires as Anglican bishop next year, marks the beginning of an era in Anglo-Catholic relations.

Simon Lee, college rector and chief executive, says this is no bad thing. "People who felt that too much media attention was going to Worlock and Sheppard - although I don't share their views - feel they can now get on with it.

"Worlock and Sheppard weren't the only ecumenists. I think they have done a fantastic job but there is a natural rhythm to it and now is the time for an appreciation of a wider involvement," he said.

Negotiations are underway for Liverpool Hope to lease a site in the Albert Dock development to provide a "shop window" for the university and churches.

Next, it plans to move into premises in Toxteth to help co-ordinate and support a number of community groups in Liverpool's most notoriously deprived area.

Finally, and more long term, the university plans to develop a church site in West Everton, location of many a Protestant/Catholic clash, to provide a concert hall, arts and design centre and student accommodation. This project will help clean-up a suburb considered a night-time no-go area and link it with the city centre. The scheme depends on National Lottery cash, a bugbear of Bishop Sheppard, chairman of university governors.