wfn.org | Archbishop Tutu's Retirement Plans

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9/29/95
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon James M. Rosenthal, Director of Communications
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Archbishop Tutu's Retirement Plans

(ENI - Ecumenical News International) The Most Revd Desmond Tutu,
the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of the Church of
the Province of Southern Africa, will retire in June next year,
ending an era of prominent church leadership in South African
politics and society.

An outspoken human rights advocate during the apartheid years and a
Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1984, Archbishop Tutu will leave Cape
Town next year to spend a year on sabbatical leave at Emory
University in Atlanta.

His media officer, John Allen, told Ecumenical News International
(ENI) that Archbishop Tutu might then spend another year in the
United States, as he had been invited to be visiting prelate at
Washington National Cathedral.

Archbishop Tutu, who has written several books, has another book
contract and also plans to write a book about Christ's
Transfiguration.

Mr Allen said that when the Archbishop and his wife returned to
South Africa, they would move back to Soweto outside Johannesburg,
where he would "perhaps write another book" and might take up "some
teaching ministry."

Archbishop Tutu has also been mentioned as a possible leader of
South Africa's official truth commission which will investigate
human rights violations by both the former apartheid regime and the
anti-apartheid liberation movement, and then make reparations to
victims. The Southern African bishops are to nominate the Archbishop
as a candidate for the Commission at their September Provincial
meeting.   But Mr Allen said that, as far as he knew, the Archbishop
had not been formally approached about the commission.

Observers frequently suggest that he could continue to play an
important role in the moral reconstruction and democratic
redevelopment of South Africa, if he does not retire completely from
public life.