"I hardly as archbishop do any baptisms. I hardly do any weddings. I hardly do any funerals...All of

CHURCH business waits for no man. There is still a week to go before Dr David Hope leaves the sumptuous surroundings of Bishopthorpe Palace for Ilkley, where he is to be the new vicar of St Margaret's. Already, however, his new parishioners have been in touch about matters that can't wait.

"They are just about to have a new church hall built," he says with the gentle humour for which he's known. "Already I'm getting emails about the drains!"

Throughout his ten years or so as the second most senior figure in the Church of England, Dr Hope has made no secret of disliking the trappings that go with being Archbishop of York. "All this," as he calls it, gesturing around his palatial if spartan study.

"I always have a nervousness about the sort of things associated with power - or that could be associated with power," he says. "Living in a place like this, it could go to your head rather if you were not careful. People do tend to put you on a pedestal."

He has tried, he says, to give his high office a human face - no one who knows him would doubt that - but he is always aware that in some way the hierarchy of the church gets in the way of his calling.

He has made the best of it that he can, he says - and it has been an "enormous privilege" to serve as Archbishop of York, and to be able to do the things and meet the people that he has.

But you do sense a certain eagerness in him to return to the grass roots of the church he loves.

"I won't miss it at all," he says. "As an archbishop you have to try to balance the dignity of the office with the humanity of the person. It is a difficult balance, and sometimes you get it wrong.

"Sometimes when you are in the Minster and they are saying all this stuff about the Most Reverend, the Right Honourable, Knight Commander and all this stuff, you think 'Goodness me, who are they talking about?' and you realise it's about you. You have to have a sense of humour about it."

The thing he has found most difficult over the past few years, however, is the lack of any real congregation of his own. "I hardly as archbishop do any baptisms. I hardly do any weddings. I hardly do any funerals," he says. "All of those most life-changing moments.

"An ordinary parish priest is much more rooted in a particular and local place, much more responsible for a particular group of people. It really is all about the family of the church."

And about the drains. Not even that dampens his enthusiasm for his new calling, however.

There will be no pangs of regret when he leaves the palace for the last time, he says. "The Christian view is that you keep moving on, you journey on and you do have to leave behind certain things. I look forward now to the next chapter."

His joy at preparing for the next stage of his life, however, is mitigated by deep sadness at the tragedy unfolding in South East Asia.

He spoke movingly this week of how the dreadful suffering and loss of life caused by the tsunami reminded him of the words of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane: 'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?'

What did he mean by that?

"As the days have gone on I have felt as though the waves of devastation and destruction were actually coming over me," he says. "I feel overwhelmed by it all. One does ask, 'where is God in all this?'"

It is the same feeling, but on a different scale, that is confronted by Christians in the face of any seemingly random tragedy, he says - the death of a little girl knocked down and killed, or of a little boy killed by a falling tree. "What do you say? What can you say?"

He remembers as a child being at Flamborough when a lifeboat was overturned and three lifeboatmen were killed.

"There are random events in life," he says. "There are tectonic plates in the structure of creation. It is a complex, fragile, precarious world."

The power of prayer is all the more important at times like this, however, he says. "Faith is extremely challenging, but I do think it properly offers comfort."

He has also been comforted by the extraordinary response of people from all over the world to the events in South East Asia. Humanity has risen to the challenge, he says. Old enmities have been buried, and there has been a coming together of people from all backgrounds in a shared effort to help.

"Even in the middle of such overwhelming tragedy, there is something God-like," he says. "That's how one tries to experience it."

And what about the acts of human callousness that have followed the tragedy? The stories of looting, and the abduction of orphaned children? An expression of genuine pain crosses his face.

"I just cannot believe that anybody could have.... That beggars belief, that does," he says. "There is a dark side of humanity as well. But the overwhelming response, of coming together and wanting to help, has been immensely moving. It restores your faith in human nature."

What has most comforted him, he says, is the way in which people of different faiths have come together. Too often throughout history, religion has been a source of hostility and conflict.

"Behind most of the threads of hostility in the world there lurks religion," he admits. "Particularly when it becomes fanatical and fundamentalist you have a very heady cocktail."

The fact that religion has such power to inspire hate rather than love is something that, as a committed Christian who sincerely believes in the love of God and the power of faith to do good, he finds deeply upsetting. So he is glad at least to see that in the aftermath of the tragedy, as the world unites in an attempt to help, differences of faith are being put aside in favour of our common, shared humanity.

"It is not necessary to reduce all faiths to the same thing. But at a time like this, we must concentrate on the commonalties, not the differences," he says. "Respect has to be there, even though there are clear differences and points of view of faith. Every human person is of great worth."

Key events during Dr Hope's time as Archbishop of York

- The death of Diana. Dr Hope met the princess on a number of occasions, and says she was a "charming, lively, sparky, fun kind of person." He was awoken at 2am on the morning of her death to be told the news. "It was hugely tragic. I could hardly believe what I was hearing."

- The Millennium Eve service at York Minster. "I remember opening the Great West Door and there was a huge crowd out in Duncombe Place. That was a night to remember."

- The great floods of 2000. "An unforgettable experience." Again, it was the response of the public to the suffering of others that most moved him. Somebody - he thinks it was Jimmy Savile - suggested that people could send contributions to the Archbishop's Fund. "This money started coming in, about £80,000, and I managed to hand out something like £78,000 very quickly, not only to York but to Selby, Gowdall, and elsewhere in the diocese."

- The Selby rail crash. "What do you say? How do you put it into words?"

Updated: 09:32 Friday, January 07, 2005