Paul Elie's superb Atlantic Monthly essay on the Archbishop of Canterbury includes an anecdote about Dr Williams joking that he should have worn a T-shirt with the words GRAVELY DEFICIENT on it to visit the then head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal Ratzinger.

Because I gave Paul the anecdote, I hope he won't mind me slightly correcting it. Dr Williams said it not after visiting Cardinal Ratzinger under John Paul II, but after returning from a delegation of religious leaders who greeted Pope Benedict XVI the day after his inauguration Mass in 2005. Same man, different occasion.

Dr Williams and the Anglican delegation were staying at the English College in Rome, the guests of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor for whom I was then working. I waved off the posse of Anglican bishops and their advisors that morning and greeted them when they came back five hours later. They had left in a buoyant mood to greet the new Pope, but returned visibly furious.