wfn.org | Re: BRAZIL: ANGLICANS INAUGURATE CLINIC FOR THE POOR

[a.whitefield@quest.org.uk]

Title:BRAZIL: ANGLICANS INAUGURATE CLINIC FOR THE POOR
July 4, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon Jim Rosenthal, Director of Communications
Anglican Communion Office
London, England

ACC 1280

This is the 111th report from the Anglican Communion News Service.  
This  
weekly service covers news stories received by the Anglican Communion
Office in London and a list of the most recent episcopal appointments.
Please credit ACNS when you reproduce items from this service. 

Please note that each news item has a unique reference number, enclosed
in square brackets, and is made us as follows [year.month.week.item
number] e.g. [97.5.4.1.]  is year 1997, month 5, week 4, news item  1.

Please contact Jim Rosenthal at the ACO on 0171 620 1110 if you have any 
queries about this service.

Jim Rosenthal, Editor.
Nicola Currie, Assistant Editor.
Joan Ford, Telecommunications Editor.

Sources used
ACNS Anglican Communion News Service
ALC Latin American and Caribbean News Service
APS Africa Press Service
CT Church Times
ENI Ecumenical News International, WCC Geneva

BRAZIL: ANGLICANS INAUGURATE CLINIC FOR THE POOR

(ALC). The Anglican Episcopalian congregation of Bage, 380 kms. from 
Porto Alegre, inaugurated a clinic where 30 professionals, including
doctors, psychologists, physiotherapists, nutritionists among others,
will serve people in low-income situations.

"We want to promote the physical, mental and spiritual recovery of these 
people, said the Revd Ramaces Hartwig. The Reason to Live Clinic  will
be open 24 hours a day and will provide free medical care to patients
who lack resources. It will also attend people who have medical
insurance and those who are able to pay.

The clinic was built with resources collected in the area through
different campaigns held in the Church. Formally, it will be connected
to the Legion of the Cross, an organisation created in 1943 by the Revd
Antonio Guedes.

ENGLAND: MISSION EVENT DRAWS THOUSANDS

(ACNS) Lichfield Diocese in the English Midlands received nearly 300 
missionaries from all over the world last month for a festival of
mission entitled - Come to the Feast.

More than half of the diocese's 432 parishes accepted the Bishop of 
Lichfield's challenge to engage in a week of special mission and
outreach during one of the first three weeks of June. Two hundred and
seventy seven  Christians from other parts of the world, most of them
ordinary church members, came to help Lichfield in the special outreach.
The climax of the initiative was a festival of mission on the Stafford
County Showground on 21 June which brought together 12,000 from all over
the England Midlands.

The visitors to the diocese came from Malaysia, Canada, the USA,
Tanzania, Zambia, Swaziland, Russia, Poland and Germany.  The visitors
joined in with every aspect of parish life from barbecues, to
traditional evangelistic rallies, to family fun days all of which were
designed to bring the Gospel to the local community.

Most of the visitors raised their own airfares to come to Lichfield.
Michael Sheard, the Mission Officer for the Diocese, spoke of the
success of the initiative. "One visitor spoke of the privilege to share
in the mission here and asked people from Lichfield Diocese to go to
their country." Many parishes  were astounded at the response to their
work. One parish in Shrewsbury spoke of the how the friends from
overseas has told them what was possible.  The Anglican mission
societies the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the
Church Mission Society both sponsored the initiative.

JERUSALEM: BISHOP SEEKS A CHRISTIAN INFLUX

(Gerald Butt, Church Times 27 June) The Archbishop of Canterbury is to
be urged at the next year's Lambeth Conference to help exiled
Palestinian Christians return to Jerusalem.

The Rt Revd Riah Abu El-Assal, Coadjutor Episcopal Bishop in Jerusalem,
says he wants to see "A Christian aliyah " - the Hebrew world for the
migration of Jews to Israel - and he wants the Anglican Church
world-wide to fund the Palestinian Christians' return.

Bishop Riah, who succeeds the Rt Revd Samir Kafity as Bishop towards the
end of next year, deplores the decline of the Arab Christian community
in Jerusalem.  "Time is running out", he says. "If the city where
Christianity was born is to remain anything other than a city of
Christian relics."

On his travels he has discovered thousands of Palestinian Christians,
now living abroad, who would move to Jerusalem if their migration were 
subsidised.  His idea is to raise funds from governments and private 
institutions to finance their return and settlement, drawing directly on
the Israeli experience of bringing in Jews from the diaspora.  The money
would also help the immigrants find homes, jobs and schools, and cover
the cost of learning Hebrew, where necessary.

Bishop Riah sees the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops as a 
launching-pad for his scheme.  "If Dr Carey were to say that he was 
initiating it, it would instantly attract the attention of Christian 
communities everywhere to the plight of Palestinians in Jerusalem. It is 
time for some dramatic and flamboyant action, before it is too late."

The Israeli authorities have been accused of using economic and
political pressure to squeeze Palestinians off their land: and "Arabs
there are asking what the Church at large is doing about justice and
securing peace," says Bishop Riah, who was visiting Britain last month.

Statements of support from Christian leaders were no longer
enough:"Strong and concrete measures" were needed from the Lambeth
Conference.

Under Israeli law, Arab East Jerusalem is regarded as being part of the 
Jewish state.  So Palestinians living there (as opposed to those in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip) have Israeli citizenship; and the same applies
to tens of thousands of Palestinians who currently live abroad. 

Resettlement funding would have to come from Christian sources, Bishop
Riah says, since Arab states will help only the Palestinian Muslim
community in the Holy Land.  And, he says, Palestinian Christians are
wondering how long they are going to remain abandoned, "A small,
threatened community in the Holy Land".

He looks forward to the day when the first jumbo jet arrives at Tel Aviv 
with 400 Christian immigrants on board, bound for Jerusalem.

"A dramatic event like that will prove to the Israelis, and the rest of
the world, that Arab Christians definitely have not given up the
struggle for the Holy Land."

KENYA: PRIMATE APPEALS TO PRESIDENT

(APS) The Anglican Primate of Kenya, the Most Revd David Gitari, has 
appealed to the President Daniel arap Moi's government to effect changes
on the country's current constitution following earlier requests by the 
Churches and other institutions.

The Archbishop was interviewed by APS on 17 June and said,"It is rather 
disappointing that President Moi's government continues to resist
changes on the constitution." Kenyans are preparing to go to the polls
for both presidential and parliamentary elections later this year.

"We are not being told openly and satisfactorily why President Moi's 
Government is against such constitutional changes, which Kenyans,
Churches and opposition parties feel strongly must take place before the
nation holds its next general elections.  This is what is worrying and
disappointing," the Archbishop said.

President Moi has openly stated that the changes being called for would
not take place before the forthcoming general elections.

According the Archbishop Gitari, President Moi's Government must realise 
that changes will come:"It is hard to resist such changes without
telling us why they are impossible.  This is what is getting onto the
churches' nerves and equally bothering us," said the Primate.

Archbishop Gitari appealed to Kenyans to register in big numbers in 
readiness for the forthcoming general elections:"This is one of the best 
ways to institute changes in the political governance of our country,"
he added. 

SIERRA LEONE: STATEMENT ON COUP

This statement on the events of May 25 1997 by the Anglican Church of 
Freetown has been received via the Church Mission Society (CMS) in
London.  It is  dated 15 June and reproduced here in full. The CMS are
coordinating relief efforts to the area.  John Evenson of CMS can be
contacted for further news reports from the region.

The Anglican Church in Sierra Leone has given long and serious
consideration to the reasons advanced by the Armed Forces Revolutionary
Council for overthrowing the constitutionally elected and legitimate
government of this country, and in the interest of its members wishes to
make the following statement.

It is our view as a  Church that the coup staged in the early hours of 
Sunday, May 25, 1997, a day which was being observed by Christians
worldwide as Trinity Sunday, was ill-timed, badly planned and executed,
resulting in wanton destruction of very vital aspects of the nation's
infrastructure.

The nation, it is true, had been yearning for peace after six years of
rebel war.  And the Church supports the view that the foundation for the 
much-desired peace was well and truly laid on November 30, 1996, by the 
signing of the Abidjan Accord - just six months before the coup.  
Furthermore, taking into consideration the sequence of events and the
many statements which have been made since Sunday, May 25, it would
appear that the bringing in of the RUF was an after-thought and
definitely not on end of the prime reasons for the coup, although it
must be conceded that the implementation of the Abidjan Accord was
beginning to run into difficulties.  These difficulties, we believe
however, were not unsurmountable by peaceful processes.

With so much propaganda now being mounted to justify the coup, the
Church owes it as a duty to the the nation, to speak out boldly against
the deflation and disruption of the celebration of Trinity Sunday and
sees this as a very sinful act invoking the wrath of God the Father, God
the Son and God the Holy Spirit, which cannot be assuaged by the various
calls to prayer to back the coup.  Indeed, God is not mocked.  It
certainly is not very surprising therefore, that the consequences of
that act of Sunday, May 25, have been so far-reaching and so
devastating.

It must be observed that this country has witnessed and experienced many 
military coups before now, whether justifiable or not; but never has it
been like this.  The Church must therefore irrevocably condemn the
consequences of the May 25 coup d'tat which involved the breaking of
the Central prisons, setting at large dangerous criminals for whom the
very AFRC has now launched a man-hunt; the destruction of the Ministry
of Finance and the Treasury Building at a time when salaries and
pensions were pending, resulting in the fact that a vast concourse of
workers and pensioners are now going without pay; the destruction of the
Central Bank which has completely disrupted the commercial banking
systems; the looting and wanton lawlessness which have resulted in a
state of insecurity, with private residences being invaded by gunmen and
molestation and terrorisation of innocent civilians particularly women.

It is the view of the Church that in the same vein in which massive 
propaganda has been mounted against perceived foreign intervention, in
the same vein the nation cannot afford to forget the wanton rape on
democracy which has resulted in creating fear and insecurity among the
people of this country, and in this same vein the international
community cannot afford to remain silent or oblivious of the plight of
the ordinary peace-loving Sierra Leonean - Christian and non-Christians
alike - and the nation as a whole.

It is a matter of great disappointment and very grave concern to the 
Anglican Church that while progressive countries have targeted important 
goals which they hope to achieve within the next three years, as we draw 
towards the close of the twentieth century and prepare to usher in the 
twenty-first century, our vision in this country is being blurred by 
narrow-mindedness which to all intents and purposes, has resulted in 
significantly turning back the hands of the clock.

If, as has been suggested, it is the intention to return the country to 
constitutional rule within a period of two years, then it is the
Church's view that there is no need for another experiment in military
rule when the experience of the last military interregnum is taken into
consideration.  Must Sierra Leone always be experimenting in the art of
constitutional rule and the practice of democracy? We will never make
any constitutional progress in the practice of democracy if every effort
to do so is rudely interrupted by those who wield power through the rule
of the gun.  We will never achieve democracy at all, if we do not put an
end to coup d'tat in this country. To do so is to start now.

All those countries which claim to believe in democracy must be prepared
to help us in our efforts to achieve this by peaceful and constitutional
means.

We are going into the twenty-first century with a record of more than 98 
percent illiteracy - about the highest in the world.  We pray, as a
Church, that Sierra Leone does not enter the twenty-first century as one
of the very few nations still practicing the rule of the gun.

END PART 1