Sunday, April 22, 2007

Global South leader Malango in the news

Archbishop Mulango has been in the news in the past few days.

Over at The Lead I've got a post on the recent pastoral letter from the Province of Central Africa supporting the Mugabi regime in Zimbabwe.

The other news, which Ruth Gledhill posted on April 20th but I've just read, concerns the story of the poisoning death of an Anglican missionary in the Diocese of Malawi. Here's an abbreviated version of Gledhill's telling of the tale:
On Remembrance Day last year, a 73-year-old English missionary priest died in Malawi. ... Now, it turns out, he was poisoned. Mutterings that all was not right with his death began a few weeks back, and police in Africa have this week confirmed the worst.
...
The diocese of Lake Malawi was in the public eye at about this time when Acton vicar Nicholas Henderson was appointed its new bishop, and then his appointment was blocked by the Global South leader Bernard Malango and by the diocese's court of confirmation because of Henderson's links with the liberal theology of the Modern Churchpeople's Union. The court described Henderson as a 'man of unsound faith'.
...
In spite of strong support in the diocese, which has long links with Henderson's west London flock, Malango appointed another bishop, Leonard Mwenda, in Henderson's place. Mwenda's enthronement was conducted under police guard, amid scenes of stone-throwing. Mwenda in turn appointed Rodney Hunter as an assistant priest at Lake Malawi's Anglican cathedral.

A few months later, Father Rodney was dead. Poisoned.

Police enquiries are continuing but I have to ask: have the Anglican Communion's gay wars claimed their first victim?
That, from Ruth Gledhill. Evidently it is unfair to say she is entirely in sync with the Global South.

I had not known of Malango's appointment of a bishop over the objections of the diocese although I have heard that archbishops in other provinces have more power than our Presiding Bishop. I guess he's not as reasonable a man as Archbishop Akinola. Gledhill provides this background post at Thinking Anglicans for more on the events in 2005 surrounding the appointment of Henderson and his replacement by Mwenda.

As someone has put it, it's pretty remarkable for Malango to sit in judgment of The Episcopal Church.

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