Caribbean Anglicans meet in Belize
It’s not often that the big guns from the Anglican Church in the Caribbean make their way to this far flung corner of the province but over the next week or so Belize City will be the site of a major gathering…at which Anglicans will be wrestling with some tough issues.
Bishop Romero
?The clergy, bishops and the laity from the province of the West Indies which makes up eight dioceses will meet, we will discuss various issues, financial, doctrinal, issues concerning our relationship with the Episcopal Church, concerning the consecration of Gene Robinson.?
Patrick Jones, Reporting
That ordination of an openly gay man to such a high position in the church in the Untied States, has threatened to break up the relationship between U.S. Episcopalians and the province of the West Indies. Close to eighty delegates from Belize, Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent, St Lucia, Grenada and Jamaica will spend the next seven days discussing this divisive issue as well as other matters of concern to the church in the region. Archbishop Dexel Gomez, who will lead the thirty fifth triennial Synod, says Anglicans in this part of the world will continue to condemn not only the Episcopal ordination, but same sex unions in Canada.
Rev. Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of the Province of the West Indies
?I sat on the Episcopal commission that the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed, and we produced the Windsor report, which was issued in the middle of October. We will be discussing that report and we will make a response as a province. I have already made known my personal view and the view that our province has espoused up to this point that we regard such practices as unbiblical and we are not prepared to support them. But we have to take our position within the Anglican world and decide how we are going to go forward together as a communion or whether we are going to be placed in a position where we have to part our ways. That is something that only the future will tell.?
Outgoing Bishop Sylvestre Romero says Belize will support the region?s decision on the Windsor Report which has suggested that Gene Robinson issue an apology to the church and that the bishops who participated in his consecration do the same.
Bishop Romero
?I don?t know if that will happen, but we will discuss the issue and at this point I don?t know what the relationship will be, if we will continue, if we will break with them. I would speculate in terms that we want to hold on to the relationship, there have always been differences, but with this particular subject I don?t know what the position would be. Belize will–
whatever is agreed at this synod, we will respect that decision and uphold it.?
The Synod will also hear from two facilitators from Jamaica who will lead a discussion of various social issues facing countries in the region, such as a spate of kidnappings in Trinidad and Tobago, uprisings in Haiti and crime and violence in the Caribbean.
Rev. Drexel Gomez
?In all of our Caribbean region violence seems to be on the increase, crime and the social ills seem to be mounting, so as the church we have to not only discus these things but try to suggest ways and means of alleviating if not reducing their occurrences in the society. But they are part of a worldwide phenomenon and we have to be careful in the way in which we seek to address them, because there are no quick fixes.?
Looking back on his tenure as head of the church in Belize over the last eleven year Romero says there have been major improvements, which he hopes will continue long after he is gone.
Bishop Romero
?The church has changed its status in many ways. For example we have included the Hispanics, we have included the Garifuna. We have Hispanic congregations, we have Garifuna congregations. And we have increased from eight clergy when I came to twenty-one
at this point. We have gone from twenty-five congregations to thirty-one congregations. We have our theological institute, not to compete with our Codrington or UTC in Jamaica, but we have found out that those persons interested in ordination would have a hard time to go full time students at Codrington or UTC. So we have developed this, our own theological institute to train persons locally.?
From that institute, Romero says the church has ordained ten persons to priesthood. Three deacons will be ordained next year.
The Synod will be officially opened with a special service on Sunday at St. John’s Cathedral in Belize City. The business sessions, which start on Monday, will be held at the Princess Hotel. This is only the second time in the one hundred twenty-five years of the Province of the West Indies that this meeting of the three houses: Bishop, Clergy, and Laity, will be held in Belize.
Bishop Romero told News 5 that he has been given a two-year assignment as Interim Bishop in the Diocese of El Camino Real in California, comprising all areas south of San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. Until a new Bishop is named, Dean of the Diocese, Father Lloyd Neal, will administer the Belize Diocese of the Anglican Church.
