'This church is crying for justice and liberation'

After the death of a detained religious leader, a community in Crumpsall mourns

Dear Millers — welcome to our dozens of new members who have joined since our editor’s note on Sunday night.

For obvious reasons, we have covered the lives of Ukrainians in Manchester quite extensively in the past fortnight, and we are planning more such stories as the war continues. But it also seems important to learn more about immigrant communities in our city who are not in the news, and who don’t have any obvious “news peg”, as they say in journalism.

Today Dani reports from an Eritrean church service in Crumpsall, where the congregation are gathered to commemorate the death of a key religious figure who was also a political prisoner, placed under 16 years of house arrest by the Eritrean government. That would be enough to make a great Mill story — but wait until you see the photos.

Open newsroom: We are working on a story — or maybe a series of stories — on homelessness in Greater Manchester, which tries to look beyond rough sleeping to the broader problem of thousands of famili…