Hurricane Melissa lashes Caribbean
BISHOPS in the Caribbean urged their people to trust in God and follow the official bulletins and advice as Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record, made landfall in Jamaica this week. The Suffragan Bishop of Kingston, the Rt Revd Garth Minott, issued a “Bishop’s Message about Tropical Storm Melissa” to the diocese of Jamaica & the Cayman Islands: he referred to Christ’s calming of the storm, and said that he and the Bishop of Montego Bay, the Rt Revd Leon Golding, were praying for Jamaicans’ safety, the Christian Daily news website reported. He also referred to a Diocesan Disaster Preparedness Plan. In Cuba, 750,000 people were evacuated from areas vulnerable to flash flooding, on Wednesday. Further damage was expected in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas. The immediate scale of the devastation was unclear, but the Red Cross said that “early indications” pointed to “a disaster of unprecedented catastrophe”.
Safeguarding conference held in Mexico
THE first Spanish-speaking meeting of the Anglican Communion Safe Church Commission was held in Mexico City this month. The meeting, jointly hosted by the Anglican Church of Mexico and the Anglican Church of the Central American Region, gathered around 30 participants, including representatives from Scotland, the United States, and South Africa, as well as Latin America. The programme’s delivery in Spanish was a “significant step in ensuring that safeguarding training and collaboration are accessible in local languages and rooted in regional contexts”, the ACNS reported. Previously, the Commission has reported that one of its challenges was overcoming the perception that safeguarding was a “foreign concept” imposed by the West (News, 24 November 2023).
Egyptian village unrest targets Copts
THE advocacy organisation Coptic Solidarity has reported an attack on Copts’ homes and farmlandin Nazlet Jelf, in the Minya province of Egypt, last week. Rumours of a romantic relationship between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman are said to have triggered the incident. In a Times of Israel online post, the political analyst Mohamed Saad Khairallah said that a local “customary” court, chaired by the mayor of the village, had penalised the young Copt and his family. This month, Coptic Solidarity’s director of development and advocacy, Lindsay Rodriguez, told the Church Times that the persecution facing Copts in Egypt was “100 per cent getting worse”.
