Man of God and of the people

From the moment John Sentamu beat out a rhythm on his African drums during his inauguration service at York Minster, we knew this was no ordinary Archbishop.

He arrived by boat, wearing a rainbow-coloured mitre and cope.

While much of the service was dominated, as ever, by ancient ritual and tradition, York's first black archbishop still managed to put his own stamp on proceedings.

African dancers wearing leopardskin print skirts and T-shirts and colourful headdresses of red, white and black feathers performed a dance of "rejoicing and thanksgiving". And for several minutes the ancient cathedral walls echoed to the rhythms of their Ugandan drumming and wailing.

It was as if a gust of fresh air had blown in through the cathedral's great west door, sweeping away the dusty cobwebs of centuries.

Dr Sentamu's predecessor as Archbishop, Dr David Hope, was well loved. Filling his shoes was always going to be difficult.

The Rev Paul Wordsworth, founder of the Arc Light centre in York and the Archbishop of York's mission and evangelism officer, recalled the anxious wait for Dr Hope's successor to be announced.

"I was thinking please don't send me some insipid person who will say he doesn't like the way I do things'," he said.

Insipid is the last word you would use to describe Dr Sentamu.

Since his inauguration, the charismatic Archbishop has breathed new life and colour into the Church of England. He's fun, he's boisterous, and, with his unerring populist touch, he has managed to reach out to people of all backgrounds and faiths.

He donned a hoodie to make the point that not all young people wearing them were thugs. On the way to his inauguration he joked about swapping his mitre with a homeless man. He visited business people in York and told them that creating wealth was OK, then added: "Alongside this, I want to ask for the highest standards of business behaviour, for the health of a company as well as the inner health of each one of us is dependant on the human spirit."

In the past few months, he has been on a mission to visit virtually every corner of his new archdiocese, dropping in on schools and church groups, playing his African drums in public and even having dinner on Christmas Eve with homeless guests at York Arc Light (he rang up the day before and asked to be invited, according to Mr Wordsworth). His beaming, gap-toothed smile has become familiar to everyone, not just the faithful. And wherever he goes, he has brought warmth, humanity and humour.

"He is great fun," said Canon John Young, Canon Emeritus of York Minster. "He's got a lively, impish sense of humour, and great, great personal warmth. He is really good news for the Church of England. He has that glint in his eye."

Above all he has not been afraid to speak out. He has an uncanny knack for expressing what many of us are thinking. When the Beckhams hosted a lavish pre-World Cup party, he was the one who put into words our sense that there was something wrong.

"What is it that some people can go to a party and pay £50,000 just to go for a meal in the evening and that would be the wages for some people over four or five years?" he said. "You have got to say that something is not right."

On a visit to York Hospital, he articulated our unease at a health service driven by targets. "This is not a factory where goods are produced," he said. "And it's not a retail shop where money is made."

He spoke out about the blame culture "Britain has become a BSE society: blame someone else" and even challenged George Bush on Guantanamo Bay. "If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial?" he asked.

He is, said Canon Young, fearless about speaking out on issues that matter to him, sharing the view of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who once asked: "If people say politics and religion should not mix, I wonder which Bible they are reading?". Dr Sentamu is in agreement with that, Canon Young says.

None of this should surprise us. This is, after all, the man who, as a High Court judge in his native Uganda, spoke out against Idi Amin.

Dr Sentamu has since described himself as a kind of Ugandan Oskar Schindler: a judge who sent ten innocent people to jail because, he said, it was the only way to save them from summary execution.

Amin marked him down as an agitator, and he was himself jailed and beaten. Speaking about that time later, he said: "Kicked about like a football, while watching others hacked to death, I knew I mustn't give in to fear. Never give up. Fear no evil God is with you."

In 1974, he and his wife Margaret were able to leave for England, on condition they did not return. Dr Sentamu began to study theology at Cambridge.

Three years later, his friend and mentor, the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum, was arrested and murdered. It cemented Dr Sentamu's determination to join the Church. "You kill my friend, I take his place," he vowed.

Since then, this man who was born the sixth of 13 children in Uganda in 1949 has risen rapidly through the Church of England.

He became a curate in the ethnically diverse London borough of Tulse Hill in 1983, and has spoken about the racial tension he encountered. "In my first curacy a man asked me: What did my father do to be buried by a black monkey?' Nevertheless, he remained in Tulse Hill for 13 years, watching his congregation grow to ten times its size.

He was consecrated Bishop for Stepney then, in 2002, appointed the eighth Bishop of Birmingham.

And then he came to York.

When news of his appointment was confirmed, he was again targeted by racists. He told a Sunday newspaper he had received letters daubed with swastikas and containing excrement.

He admitted he sometimes looked at people and wondered if it was them writing these "terrible, terrible letters".

"But I wake up every morning and I am breathing and I say, It's a good day: it's going to be a good day'," he said.

His appointment was indeed a good day for race relations in this country. But it was far more than that.

He is simply the best man for the job, said Mr Wordsworth, an inspiring leader with the common touch who can reach out to people of all faiths and backgrounds. "It will be a test for some people to learn to face their own kind of prejudices," he added. "But I am glad to find myself working beside him."

So are many others. In some quarters, in fact, York's colourful new Archbishop is already being talked about as the man to save the Church of England.

It would be unfair to heap too much expectation upon him, said Canon Young. Yet he does have an uncanny ability to reach out to people and he is not embarrassed to speak passionately about his faith.

Sometimes, Canon Young believes, church leaders can be a "bit nervous about coming on too strong". Not Dr Sentamu.

"He does see Christianity as being good news," said Canon Young. "He filters pretty much everything through his Christian faith and he longs for people to come to faith in Jesus Christ because he feels that is a really fulfilling way of being human."

If anyone can convince a sceptical British public about that, it will be Dr Sentamu.

The Archbishop in his own words:

On multiculturalism"Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories its struggles, its joys, its pains."

On young people

"99 per cent of those who wear hoodies are law-abiding citizens."

On English culture

"It has given us parliamentary democracy It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out."

On York Arc Light

"One of the marks of a caring, civilised society is the way it treats men and women who have dropped through the net and are on their beam ends."

On unity

"My mother used to say it is only teeth together that can chew food. A tooth alone cannot do it."

On community

"High fences never make good neighbours We have become rich as a nation; we have built our own houses, built our fences. Some people are living in houses where boundaries are so safe, with big gates that is a prison. How can they be anything but barriers to community?"