Anglican Communion meeting ends in Lusaka

The Anglican Consultative Council’s 16th meeting (ACC-16) which began on 8 April came to an end Tuesday 19 April in the Zambian capital of Lusaka. The meeting was held at Lusaka’s Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

The leader of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, delivered his address on 15 April. In his speech, he briefed members of the Anglican Consultative Council on the outcome of the Primates’ gathering and meeting that took place in Canterbury Cathedral in January 2016.

The outgoing chair of the Anglican Consultative Council described the just ended ACC-16 as a meeting that brought the body of Christ together.

“We’ve been able to see that our diverseness and that some of our differences in culture, language and ways of being are actually an enrichment of the body of Christ,” retired Malawi Bishop James Tengatenga said during a closing news conference on the evening of 18 April held at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Lusaka.

“It has been a celebration of the life of the Church, and God has been with us,” Bishop Tengatenga said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, speaking at the same news conference, said the meeting’s opening Eucharist, which combined thousands of Anglicans with Zambian President Edgar Chagwa Lungu and Kenneth Kaunda, the country’s first president, and other government officials epitomised what the work of the Church is about.

Calling the Eucharistic Service a “hugely joyful celebration,” Archbishop Welby said it “summed up most of what the Church is about.” The Service gave the sense “that we can count on Christ for strength even in difficult times and difficult places; to look for truth as... a Jesus people,” the Archbishop of Canterbury said.

18 April was a marathon legislative day for the ACC-16.  The Council passed 44 resolutions.

The Council earlier in the week elected Hong Kong Archbishop Paul Kwong to be its next chair.

Kwong, the second and current Archbishop and Primate of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, said at a brief news conference after his election, that he was “deeply honored and humbled” to be elected. He called the job a “huge responsibility to serve the ACC and the communion, together with the delegates” and also with the Instruments of Communion.

 “We have to make the communion relevant to the world, to the people that we are called by God to serve,” Archbishop Kwong said.

[Source: Episcopal News Service – Lusaka, Zambia]

Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va