• WHEN I was a child Trafalgar Square was full of pigeons.

We used to spread seeds on our heads and shoulders to call them to us. Then someone, probably a satanist, started calling them flying rats and the mayor, forgetting how they had helped the country as messengers in World War II, got rid of them.

As a Roman Catholic I believe that the Holy Spirit descended on the baptised Christ in the form of a dove. Pigeons are doves in grey suits.

Some days ago, I stopped in South End Green to sit by the fountain to ponder on the early days of my exile from Italy. It’s full of pigeons there by the fountain, maybe because it was a sacred site in ancient times, on the shores of the, now underground and filthy River Fleet.

There was only a man on the bench in front of me, a delivery driver with his bike resting behind him. He was eating rice and threw some of it on the ground but the pigeons strangely didn’t come down to feed.

They stayed huddled on top of the fountain and looked down on us. “They’re scared,” said the man. “Because people abuse them.”

Then he told me, maybe because I wear a very visible cross, that his visa had ran out three years ago. He had no fixed abode, no doctor, no family and no hope. The dejection in his face was total. But his eyes were bright with a light that came from within.

Allah, he said, was the god he believed in.

That day I read of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s stance on the Rwanda bill.

This vile government poured out its poison in response. How dare he be a Christian? Doesn’t he know his place? Why isn’t he content with anointing kings?

I thought of the Anglican vicar of Saint Michael’s in Camden Town.

Not so long ago someone moved the altar out of place in his chapel – I am not surprise Camden is full of satanists – and Fr Michael tripped during the service.

Would it have mattered if he had fallen and bashed his head on the stone flooring, the holy bread scattered around him?

Does it matter that all the churches in the borough are closed most of the day because of vandalism?

Maybe it’s for the best. After all they just get in the way of us tormenting illegal immigrants.

We can’t possibly have them all here. Only enough to do the worst jobs.

If our country would just stop pillaging theirs maybe they wouldn’t need to leave. Wouldn’t they now?

Beware, the pigeons are watching. They don’t like the Rwanda bill.

But they like the Church of England. Very much.

JOSEPHINE BRUNI, NW5