Saint Packham of Fitzrovia: The Blasphemy the Radio Times Is Proud Of

There was a time — not that long ago — when Radio Times was a respectable listings magazine, a middle-class fixture that told you what was on the telly without trying to moralise or evangelise. Today? It commissions a photograph of Chris Packham styled as St. Francis of Assisi, kneeling in saintly ecstasy beneath a shaft of light in a consecrated chapel, surrounded by animals like a BBC-endorsed eco-messiah.

Yes, really. Not a parody. Not a spoof. A straight-faced, reverential portrait — displayed in Fitzrovia Chapel — funded, curated, and publicised by Radio Times.

Let’s not beat about the bush: this is not merely tasteless. It is a grotesque act of cultural and religious appropriation, and an insult to anyone who still holds the Christian faith — especially Catholicism — as something more than a visual resource for middle-class guilt and green dogma.

The image borrows shamelessly from traditional Catholic iconography. Packham kneels in prayer, eyes raised to the heavens, animals at his side, bathed in light. It is a direct visual echo of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian mystic who bore the wounds of Christ and lived in radical poverty for the love of God.

Only here, there’s no God. Just Gaia.

And Radio Times couldn’t be prouder. This is, in their view, an “important cultural moment” — a celebration of Packham’s compassion and his “connection with nature.” What it actually reveals is something else entirely: a complete lack of spiritual literacy, combined with a sneering indifference to what Christians — and Catholics in particular — actually believe.

Packham’s own commentary only deepens the insult. He describes the portrait as “a photograph about love, a love of life, all life,” and speaks of “an engagement of equals” with nature. No mention of God. No reference to prayer. No hint of the asceticism, suffering, or faith that defined the real St. Francis. Just the usual secular sermon about climate crisis, dressed in the stolen robes of the sacred.

But it’s not just ignorance. It’s arrogance. Packham’s self-presentation as a saint — a new patron of the environment — is a prime example of hubris. It is a man who presumes to co-opt the mantle of one of Christianity’s holiest figures, not out of reverence, but out of entitlement. The assumption is clear: that his own voice, causes, and image deserve the sanctity and veneration reserved for saints. This is not humility; it is the very opposite — a form of self-aggrandisement dressed as humility.

This is the environmental movement’s new tactic: sanctify the message, canonise the messengers, and do it all using the aesthetics of a religion they neither understand nor respect.

And Radio Times, once a neutral and frankly dull publication whose job was to tell you when Songs of Praise was on, now styles itself as curator-in-chief of the New Morality. The result? A propaganda rag for bourgeois virtue-signalling, dripping with the patronising assumption that it knows best — and that it may, with impunity, pillage Christian symbolism to bolster the Church of Climate.

This isn’t the first time the BBC establishment has revealed its religious illiteracy. Consider their recent coverage of the funeral of Pope Francis and the ensuing conclave that elected Pope Leo. The tone was unmistakable: fawning tributes to Francis’s “progressive” values, followed by a parade of anxieties about the possible return of a conservative pope who might reverse the “progress.” Every now and then, they wheeled out a Catholic to mutter something about the late pope’s “spiritual values,” as if to meet a quota.

The ignorance was breath-taking. One could be forgiven for thinking they’d never read a gospel in their lives — or if they had, they’d misfiled it under “early climate activism.” To the BBC mindset, it seems Jesus was a sandal-wearing proto-Greenpeace volunteer who mostly went around hugging lepers and making quinoa. That he was the Incarnate Word of God, who spoke in apocalyptic terms about judgment, sin, and eternal truth — that reality simply doesn’t compute in Broadcasting House.

Because the modern BBC, like the wider cultural class it reflects, has replaced religion with sentiment, transcendence with therapeutic language, and truth with vibes. The only sacred things now are climate activism, identity politics, and NHS clapathons.

But the deeper rot is philosophical. This is what happens when a society loses its grip on meaning. Symbols are no longer doors to transcendence — they’re costumes to be worn. Faith is gutted of mystery and dogma, and rebranded as wellness. The saints are no longer models of spiritual discipline; they’re lifestyle influencers.

In this vision of the world, Packham can kneel in a chapel and play at being Francis of Assisi, not because he believes what Francis believed, but because Francis has been reduced to an aesthetic: birds, sunlight, and barefoot humility, minus the crucified Christ and the stigmata.

But some of us still remember what these things mean. Some of us still believe that holy places are not theatrical sets, and that Catholic saints are not to be raided like props from the BBC wardrobe department. The Church may be battered, ignored, and scorned — but it is not yours to colonise, mock, or misrepresent.

That Radio Times did this so glibly — and that the BBC class so entirely untroubled by its implications — should serve as a warning. These people do not just misunderstand Christianity. They believe they’ve moved beyond it. And yet, like children playing with sacred relics, they cannot help reaching for its symbols whenever they want to speak with moral force.

Because, deep down, even they know: only the sacred has power.

And so they take it, drain it, and use it to sell their ideology.

Shame on Radio Times for commissioning this. Shame on the BBC for promoting it. And shame on those in the Church who remain silent while the faith of their forefathers is reduced to a costume party for secular sermonising.

The work itself — if you can call it that — neatly encapsulates some of the deepest pathologies of our age. The narcissism, the incessant over-diagnosis of “neurodiversity” that diverts scarce resources from those genuinely in need. The relentless medicalisation of what used to be considered normal human variation. The passive-aggressive culture of “safe spaces” and the hollow mantra to “be kind,” which too often masks fragility and entitlement.

Then there’s the brazen disrespect for Christianity — not only from secular elites like Packham but also from the Church of England itself, which has largely abandoned its own traditions in favour of trendy woke platitudes.

And let’s not forget the misanthropic, self-loathing idea that humanity itself is some sort of plague that must be saved from — the planet is supposedly “on the brink,” and we’re the evil invaders.

Yet behind all this virtue-signalling, the reality is far less lofty. Chris Packham is just a nasty piece of work. A man who once said, “If anyone here is banking with Barclays, then I suggest you stick your head in a bucket of fuel and set fire to it.” This is not humility or saintliness — it is arrogance, vitriol, and a smug sense of moral superiority dressed up as environmental concern.

So yes, Radio Times may have commissioned this blasphemous spectacle. But it’s not just about bad taste or ignorance. It’s a symptom of a society that has lost its spiritual compass, where sacred symbols are stolen to serve the egos of self-appointed moral crusaders. And for Catholics — and anyone with a shred of respect for true faith — that is deeply offensive.