Ground broken on cathedral gift shop

The recent boom in cruise tourism has not only benefited taxi drivers, vendors and hair braiders, but pretty soon one Belize City church will be looking to cash in. St. John’s Cathedral, the oldest Anglican Church in Central America, will soon be opening a gift shop. Today was the ground breaking.

Rt. Rev’d Sylvestre Romero, Anglican Bishop

“They realized that tourists were coming in from the tourist ships to visit the cathedral and they thought that there were things that we could offer them. Postcards from the cathedral and little gifts that would help to sustain the cathedral; and so the idea of a gift shop occurred.”

“One of the uniqueness of the Anglican Church is that it has always been a church that serves the need of the people. But because of limited funds we have been unable to do that and hopefully the more funds we get, we will be able to serve the needs of the people with day care or clinics, whatever the needs are, or join with other denominations or other institutions to help.”

Cost of the building is estimated at thirty-eight thousand dollars. Much of the funding has been provided by the Ministry of tourism, area representative Mark Espat and Prime Minister Said Musa.