Bermuda

A Somerset, Bermuda Catholic church has applied to expand its almost full cemetery onto a vacant parcel it obtained through a 2012 land exchange with a neighbouring owner.

Land a Bermuda priest left to the Catholic Church for a priests’ retreat passed to the Government under a 15-year condition, became the Loyal Hill playground in 1997, and was restored in 2025 with more than $100,000 from reinsurers.

The Salvation Army closed its King Street thrift store in Bermuda after 41 years, saying the shop had become hard to sustain, and redirected the space to expand its Harbour Light addiction programme from 10 to 14 beds.

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.

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 Bermuda craftsman spent two months restoring 14 century-old cedar windows at St Peter’s Church rectory in St George’s in 2021, work paid for by the Friends of St Peter’s Church at a cost of more than $20,000.

Bermuda’s 2021 plans to close primary schools put a spotlight on their church roots: St George’s Preparatory began in a Methodist Sunday school in 1876, and St David’s Primary in a building owned by St Luke’s AME Church in 1893.

Cobbs Hill Methodist in Warwick, built by enslaved workers in 1827 and Bermuda’s oldest standing Methodist church, sought a new home for its 1883 pipe organ in 2019 as its 22-member congregation looked to find $25,000 for a modern keyboard.

Rather than sell, the vestry of St Peter’s West, an Anglican church in St George’s, Bermuda, that closed in 2017, rented the building to the New Testament Church of God in 2018 and put 14 pews on sale at $100 each.

St John’s Anglican Church in Pembroke, Bermuda, renovated its 1835 bell tower in 2017, replacing corroded steel beams and concrete slabs with fibreglass beams while protecting a five-tonne bell assembly.

Hurricane Nicole punched a hole in the historic sanctuary roof of Bethel Church in Bermuda in 2016, with repairs expected to take about two weeks, far less than the month needed after 2014’s storms.

A Bermuda government listing showed 134 churches and rectories paying no land tax, sparking debate over whether churches should help cut public debt. Church leaders defended the exemption, while officials said some parsonage exemptions may need revisiting.

Allen Temple AME in Somerset, Bermuda, marked 142 years in 2015: its first church stood on land bought by members in 1877, was destroyed by an 1899 hurricane, and was rebuilt by 1907 after family land was conveyed to it.

St James’ the Greater Anglican Church in Sandys, Bermuda, appealed in 2015 for $53,000 to repair its storm-damaged hall roof after insurance covered just over $100,000 of a $153,000 bill.