Law and order had broken down, people were hungry, homeless and plague-stricken, when Gregory 1 became pope at the end of the 6th century.  What to do?  He said the Church’s priority must be care of the poor.  So Pope Gregory stepped in and filled the civic and political vacuum.  A monk who had once been Prefect of Rome and a diplomat, he was a reluctant pope, disliking grandiose titles and calling himself ‘servant of the servants of God’.  For centuries his book, Pastoral Care, was read closely by would-be priests and bishops.  It proposed an ideal where they would be selfless pastors and lively preachers.  Gregory’s personal style is caught in his letters to Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury: relaxed, accommodating and not at all bossy.  When he died they put on his tomb, as a simple statement of his life, the words “The Consul of God’.  History called him Gregory the Great.