So it is of some spiritual comfort to discover that even religious leaders, whose minds and souls are focused for the rest of the year on the betterment of mankind and matters transcendent, should also be preoccupied today with the battle to lose weight.

The Times spoke to several leaders to discover what new year’s resolutions they would be pledging at midnight tonight. Along with resolutions to do more to make poverty history and campaign for world peace, they showed their endearingly human side as they pledged to fight the sins of sloth and gluttony.

Even Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, who has always maintained a slim, fit appearance, is determined to lose weight. “How can you change the world if you can’t change your weight?” he said.

The Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Barry Morgan, is resolved to “get back into the dinner suit”, as well as lower his golf handicap.

The Bishop of Bradford, the Right Rev David James, also confessed: “Every year I make the same new year’s resolution, the resolution many of us make after eating more and walking less than we had intended — but to no avail. The food I enjoy has not made a similar resolution to cut back on me. I fight the battle of the bulge unaided and with very limited success.”

Canon Andrew White, the Coventry Cathedral clergyman who has been a key figure in helping to negotiate hostage releases in Iraq through the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, has a slightly more unusual resolution.

“I am resolved to be more careful in how I deal with the CIA,” he said. He has also pledged “to be more careful with my exercises for multiple sclerosis”.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, is setting a lead for all with his resolution to take more time out of his hectic schedule for spiritual reflection. “We all need to stop and catch our breath from time to time. I think we would all benefit from doing more of this in 2006,” he said.

Of all the people we contacted, the only one to quote the Bible directly was the new Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who quoted Philippians. He said: “It is my confident hope that nothing will daunt me or prevent me from speaking boldly; and that now as always Christ will be glorified in my body, whether the verdict be life or death.”

We are offering a bottle of champagne to the reader who e-mails the wittiest or most original resolution to Ruth Gledhill’s blog at www.timesonline.co.uk/faith/

IN 2006, I WILL ...

Right Rev Dr John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln If ambitions to save our planet from environmental disaster and make poverty history are to be advanced, our individual initiatives will matter just as much as international accords

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