Anglican

Releven’s Winnipeg Declaration urges Canadian faith leaders to turn underused church land into affordable housing, as a third of the country’s 27,000 religious buildings face closure, with projects such as a 110-unit tower at a Winnipeg Anglican church.

Hurricane Melissa left only the bell tower of St John’s Anglican in Black River standing. The congregation moved into the partly damaged rectory, and four of the five churches in the cure were severely damaged.

The Sunday Gleaner traced the history of St John’s Anglican Church in Black River, consecrated in 1843 and once endowed with over 200 acres of glebe land, after Hurricane Melissa destroyed the building, leaving only its belfry standing.

Hurricane Melissa damaged or destroyed about 40 heritage structures, the Gleaner reported, including Beeston Spring Moravian Church in Westmoreland, reduced to rubble, and St Michael’s Anglican in Clark’s Town, Trelawny.

The chairman of the Barbados Diocesan Trustees set out plans for a $10 million multi-storey development on church land at Collymore Rock and defended sales of Glebe land to tenants at subsidised prices as low as $5 per square foot.

Hurricane Melissa destroyed or badly damaged about 50 Anglican church buildings in Jamaica, including four historic churches left flat, Anglican leaders said. The bishop called it unprecedented destruction of the island’s historic buildings.

Two near-derelict former Anglican churches in Devonport, Auckland, bought for NZ$1.32 million in 2017 and converted into luxury homes, sold for $4.25 million after an earlier deal collapsed over a Commerce Commission ruling.

Toronto’s Anglican diocese, with more than 400 properties, adopted a Strategic Property Plan in 2024, set up a $5 million pre-development fund and is considering uniting more than 1,000 housing units into one non-profit entity.

Friends Supporting the Anglican Diocese of Belize launched an infrastructure endowment for Anglican Cathedral College’s campus at a New York event, with Belize City Council giving the first BZ$10,000.

A fire at Christ the King Anglican Church in Ridgeland Park, Nassau, gutted offices and a pantry behind the sanctuary and left smoke damage in the church, in the very section that was about to undergo a $250,000 renovation.

Sydney Anglican Property prepared plans for two church sites in south-west Sydney, 185 social and affordable homes at St Paul’s Bankstown and 74 at a former church in Regents Park, backed by the federal Housing Australia Future Fund.

As about 200 clergy and lay delegates met to elect a successor to Bishop Howard Gregory, the Gleaner noted that the Anglican Church owns vast properties and many schools in Jamaica even as it faces falling membership and financial pressure.

Jamaica’s denominations report a deepening pastor shortage: a young Moravian minister earns a little over $100,000 a month with a manse, Baptists have 108 ministers for 341 churches, and Anglican stipends average $50,000 to $70,000.

A Bermuda churchman is auctioning napkin rings made from copper salvaged from Hamilton cathedral’s old roof, replaced in a $2 million appeal in 2011, to help fund $35,000 of repairs to the organ at St Mark’s Anglican Church.

Bermuda’s Anglican Church has partnered with Habitat for Humanity and the hospitals board to turn the derelict former St James Rectory in Somerset into Bridge House, a residential treatment home for up to eight psychiatric patients.