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Good morning. It was a North American TV reporter who put me on the spot. Two days after the Manchester Arena attack in May 2017, she asked me outright on camera whether, as a Christian, I was ready to forgive the man who had killed 22 people, and injured hundreds of others, 200 yards from my cathedral. “Not yet”, I replied. “Forgiveness, is not a place we can jump to in a short space of time. For now I’m too angry.” This week, with the brother of the bomber now serving 55 years or more in prison for his part in the crime, the Public Inquiry into the atrocity has opened. Hearing the harrowing evidence, took me back to that interview, and to question myself on how far I have or haven’t moved on, in these last three years. Unlike 900 others, I bear no scars, mental or physical, from that dreadful night, nor did I lose anyone close to me. My faith community was not vilified through association with the bomber, save by that tiny few who see all religion as guilty wherever faith is adduced as excuse for a crime. I have no right to issue any words of forgiveness on behalf of almost a thousand victims, nor in the name of my city. But I am accountable before God for my own feelings. And I’m still angry. Angry, but the focus of my anger has changed. It now rests on the shadowy figures who whisper their words of hatred into the ears of susceptible young people. Those who spread an ideology that pretends mass murder will secure a place in paradise; who know that one fanatical convert may wreak havoc to stun the world. These are far harder to forgive than their deluded disciples. Their perverse ideology does not blow itself out with a bomb blast; it cannot be locked in a prison cell, safe from causing harm. What Manchester discovered in May 2017, is that hatred will never vanquish hate, only love can do that. We defy the peddlers of hatred, by crossing the boundaries of our differences, drawing ever closer to each other. It’s a truth which for me emerges direct from the teaching of St John, that the very essence of God is love. And a righteous anger, to use a biblical term, can be the very fuel by which love conquers hate. I hope that the Arena Public Inquiry will produce answers to the questions survivors have carried with them for three long years. Beyond that, I hope that those answers will not assuage appropriate anger, but direct it where it can be most effective: to resist the hate mongers and to build better lives and communities, in Manchester and beyond.