Ecuador Episcopalians welcome Presiding Bishop
Episcopal News Service. August 3, 2007 [080307-01]
ENS Staff
When the Episcopal Church's Executive Council visits Ecuador for its February 2008 meeting, members will find congregations and dioceses engaged in mission and seeking new partnerships.
Ecuador's two dioceses encompass people "whose mission is to be in solidarity with the poorest, to advocate for those who are displaced, to be present to those in greatest need," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said upon her return from a July 12-17 pastoral visit.
The Quito-based Diocese of Ecuador Central, led by Bishop Wilfrido Ramos-Orench, will host the Executive Council members and acquaint them with local ministries in the diocese of more than 40 congregations, schools, a seminary, and local community-outreach ministries. The Council will meet February 11-14 at Quito's Hilton Colon hotel, located in the nation's capitol rising at an altitude of some 9,500 feet above sea level.
"We look forward to welcoming you back next year," Ramos told the Presiding Bishop at the conclusion of her visit, part of an 18-day itinerary with church leaders in the Episcopal Church's dioceses in Ecuador and Colombia, and in the autonomous Anglican-Episcopal Province of Brazil.
Ramos was appointed to lead the diocese in 2006, before which he was bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Connecticut.
More than 600 people participated in a July 15 Eucharist, including numerous confirmations, in Central Ecuador's Catedral El Senor. The liturgy was followed by a festive celebration with local food, live music and folk dances, with selections in cultural styles typical of the Andes mountain region.
The visit began July 12 in Guayaquil, in the Diocese of Ecuador Litoral, led by Bishop Alfredo Morante-Espana, who has led the diocese since 1994. The diocese includes some 30 congregations, several schools, a camp, and a seminary program.
Morante took particular pride in introducing the local school communities to the Presiding Bishop, noting his vision of "having a school with every congregation," which will support the future of the diocese and the Episcopal Church.
Students and faculty from the schools gathered with the Presiding Bishop and her delegation in a day of festivities, with presentations recognizing the annual national observance of "Ecuadoran identity."
Tours of local school campuses followed, and a festive Eucharist was celebrated in the diocese's San Mateo cathedral, with Jefferts Schori preaching in Spanish.
A set of conversations were held with representatives of mission for the diocese. The group included clergy, seminary faculty, seminarians, youth representatives, and members of the Episcopal Church Women.
Common themes included ministry development for the future, and maintaining strong partnerships with the rest of the Episcopal Church. Both Ecuador dioceses are part of the Episcopal Church's largely Latin American Province 9. Other talks addressed mission support, and strengthening the system for clergy pensions.
Noting that participants were "certainly eager for partnerships," the Presiding Bishop also said she detected in the conversations "a sense of some restlessness, a willingness and readiness to get on about more creative implementation with the gospel in that place."
Throughout the visit, she also affirmed the importance of ministries with and for indigenous persons.
The Guayaquil gathering "focused on the mission and the sense of pride people have for the mission of the diocese, and hopes for the future," said the Episcopal Church's director of mission, the Rev. Dr. James B. Lemler, who was part of the Presiding Bishop's delegation in Ecuador.
Also part of the delegation were the Presiding Bishop's husband, Richard Schori, a retired mathmetician, and the Rev. Canon Juan I. Marquez, who serves the Episcopal Church's Office of Anglican and Global Relations as partnerships officer for Latin America and the Caribbean.
"It was extremely energizing to see the ministry of the churches in Ecuador and the engagement of the people in mission despite the scarcity of resources," Marquez told Episcopal News Service. "I was particularly amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of the people and how much they are able to accomplish, especially in reaching out to the poor in both rural and urban communities.
"The visit of the Presiding Bishop and the message she brought has helped these two dioceses gain exposure in the country," Marquez added. "The people of Ecuador are now really talking about the Episcopal Church and its presence in the country."
Environmental care, petroleum preservation
In Quito, environmental concerns were in focus as the Presiding Bishop met with two government officials in Ecuador, the undersecretary of energy and mines, Jorge Jurado, and the minister of the economy, Ricardo Patino.
"The Undersecretary of Energy and Mines has a very creative proposal in the formation process to preserve an oil deposit in the Amazon," Jefferts Schori told ENS, "and he's looking for international support for this project.
"It's a deposit that's large enough to represent 12 days of global oil use and the proposal is to preserve it rather than exploit it," she explained. "It would require basically some financial investment from other parts of the globe to the government in Ecuador not to exploit this resource.
"The government itself is willing to contribute half the cost of preserving this resource but it's asking for contributions from other international governments to preserve the resource and it's done for a variety of reasons, both to demonstrate that something like this is a creative possibility to reduce carbon output that would result from burning all of that oil, to preserve the environment in that area and to defend the lives and livelihoods of the people who live in that area."
Also in Quito, Jefferts Schori was welcomed by U.S. Ambassador Linda Jewell.
Continuing in the Diocese of Ecuador Central, the Presiding Bishop visited several mission congregations, including San Nicholas, Quito.
She joined an in-depth conversation with clergy and spouses with topics including the mission of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion, current opportunities and challenges facing the wider church, including full engagement of the Millennium Development Goals. One priest took issue with U.S. foreign policy, questioning the continuation of war in Iraq.
"In conversations in both dioceses in Ecuador, we talked about partnership," Jefferts Schori said, "about the reality of the existence of long relationships between the church in Ecuador and the church here, the value that the larger Episcopal Church places on the presence of the church in South America, particularly in Ecuador. I certainly heard from them the great hunger for more possibility of partnership.
"We have something to learn from their experience as well as perhaps being able to offer some gifts as they come from the North American context," the Presiding Bishop added, speaking in an Episcopal Life video interview (online at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81231_ENG_HTM.htm).
U.S. dioceses share in ministries
Both Jefferts Schori and mission director Lemler pointed to the important work of medical missionaries, including those from the dioceses of Tennessee, Colorado and North Carolina.
A recent Guayaquil medical mission conducted by a team including Episcopalians from Tennessee and Colorado was completed July 9-13, overlapping with Jefferts Schori's visit.
Some 779 patients -- adults and children, many with chronic illnesses -- were treated during the mission, with most receiving needed prescriptions, according to statistics provided by Dale D. Ensor, chemistry professor at Tennessee Tech University, who said this is the group's 10th year of medical missions.
Meanwhile, 1,234 patients were provided with anti-parasite medication administered in four congregations and one school during the most recent one-week July mission.
Some 425 pairs of reading glasses were also distributed, along with 57 prescriptions.
The 27-member ecumenical team included 17 people from Tennessee, eight from Colorado, one from Mississippi, and another from Georgia. Participating medical staff from Tennessee and Colorado were one physician, one nurse practicioner, four pharmacists, one pre-med student, and two triage professionals. Ecuadorean medics hired to assist included three physicians and one optometrist.
Richard Schori, who has continued email communication with Ensor, commended the "fine work this team has been doing for a long time."
Of the visit overall, Lemler underscored the "great effort and potential in mission for both of these dioceses -- and the strong and growing partnerships with U.S. congregations and dioceses."
Lemler said those partnerships "will continue to assist the future ministries for both dioceses."
Mission conversations over time have included discussion of whether the two Ecuador dioceses should at some time be merged into one, or perhaps restructured creatively to provide two bishops within one diocesan structure.
The Presiding Bishop noted that the church in Ecuador Central is "experiencing a period of resurrection" after some years of "a difficult relationship with the last bishop, and some alientation of property."
Yet the diocese has "a great sense of being able to address the needs of the community with what looks to many Americans like limited financial resources," Jefferts Schori said.
She cited the diocese's "sense...that God has put us in this place to engage in mission. And God has given us gifts and we are going to put those gifts to work even if they don't look like great abundance to people from other contexts.
"That's certainly an experience that much of the rural church in the United States knows pretty well," Jefferts Schori added.
"We saw in a number of places evidence of clergy who have other employment, employment in the world and yet give sacrificially of their own selves and time and treasure for mission work within the church and the communities surrounding those churches."
Jefferts Schori thanked diocesan leaders for their willingness to host the upcoming Executive Council meeting, and said members will enjoy visiting the local Quito area.
"It's a very beautiful place," she said. "You'll see great evidence of the multi-cultural experience of the church in Ecuador, lots of indigenous people of several different tribal backgrounds. We were there over a weekend and there was a fair in the park right across the street from the hotel, the same hotel where Executive Council will meet, at which the wares of different indigenous groups were displayed."
Participants, she said, will "certainly have opportunity to experience some of the cultural richness of that area."
[An image gallery of the Presiding Bishop's visit to Ecuador is available here.]