Anglican

The Anglican Diocese of Wellington delivered two prefab homes from its own Featherston factory to church land at St Luke’s Castlecliff in Whanganui, as the archbishop said the diocese was putting homes on available parish land.

In a Gleaner column, Anglican priest Fr Sean Major-Campbell challenged the prosperity gospel, arguing that houses, cars and land come through study, work and time, not seed offerings, and that some pastors’ boasting about wealth has become obscene.

Hurricane Beryl brought down the entire roof of St Peter’s Anglican Church in Pedro Plains, St Elizabeth, a 1941 building that is mother church to six congregations. Seven weeks later, repairs had not started and no cost estimate was given.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit was scratched, but the Spanish Town Cathedral’s story stands: built on Spanish foundations in 1666, rebuilt after a 1712 hurricane and restored after the 1907 earthquake, it is the oldest cathedral in the former British colonies.

An Anglican priest describes a Kingston relief mission to St Peter’s Church Hall in Pedro Plains after Hurricane Beryl, where lines outgrew the hall, and notes that restoring roofs and housing will take far longer than meeting daily needs.

The Episcopal Church’s 2024 General Convention reaffirmed housing as a human right and encouraged dioceses and congregations to review their unused land and property as a potential pathway to more affordable homes.

Ottawa approved rezoning of the Julian of Norwich Anglican Church site in Nepean for 84 affordable homes, including an eight-storey building with a church on the ground floor and 27 family townhomes.

Holy Trinity Anglican Church took its award-winning anti-gang play out of Grange Hill to Savanna-la-Mar because residents are afraid to go out after dark, as Westmoreland’s custos tied local gangs to lottery scamming money.

Winnipeg’s Holy Trinity Anglican Church, an 1884 National Historic Site found in 1989 to have no foundation, needs more than $7 million in repairs, and Heritage Winnipeg says it should have been sold before costs grew so high.

Anglican priest Raulston Nembhard argued that about 60 per cent of clergy work is administrative, from budgets and fundraising to meetings, and urged churches to hand business functions to lay administrators so pastors can return to pastoral care.

Bermuda’s Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity paused a meals programme that served 130 to 150 people a day at $9,000 a week, planning a hall kitchen renovation so it can cook on site and offer sit-down meals.

A Tongan Free Wesleyan congregation in Timaru leased, then in 2017 bought, the former St Peter’s Anglican Church, and used a $500,000 government grant for earthquake strengthening, safety work and upgrades.

St Ambrose Episcopal Church in Claremont, California, planned to lease its parking lot to National CORE for 59 affordable homes for seniors, including supportive housing for older people who are homeless or at risk.

Cuba’s provisional Episcopal bishop, Rafael Morales Maldonado, said finishing the bishop’s office and residence for his permanent successor was a priority, as the reunited church faced shortages and a need for more clergy.

Anglican dioceses across the Eastern Caribbean are leasing church land for homes, businesses and farming, from pepper fields in Nevis to rental buildings in Antigua, to pay for restoring churches, some of them centuries old.