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Episcopal Churches Help Thousands Mourn Princess Diana, Mother Teresa

Episcopal News Service. September 26, 1997 [97-1966]

From Central Park to Salt Lake City, from cathedrals to small mission churches, Episcopal churches helped thousands mourn the death of Princess Diana in early September.

"Thank you for making this available," mourners told the staff of Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky. "She suffered many of the same kinds of things my friends and I have suffered... I needed to pay my respects and I wanted my children to have something to remember."

In the weeks following the sudden death of Princess Diana, who died with two others in an automobile accident in Paris on August 30, diocesan, cathedral and parish staff members around the country scrambled to accommodate requests to respond to the tragedy, which became a media-driven, worldwide period of intense mourning.

In Chicago, Presiding Bishop-elect Frank Griswold said in a homily to the 700 mourners jammed into St. James' Cathedral, "Diana was courageous and fearful; intensely private and shockingly self-disclosing; self-serving and self-giving; she was in so many ways a mirror of our own humanity writ large, complete with all its paradoxes and contradictions, all its struggles to find meaning in life and to find love, which is perhaps why so many thought of her as 'one of us."'

Responding to many needs

Initially, many congregations planned only a few words or prayers on the Sunday following her death. As the week wore on, and televised reports from England and around the world showed thousands of mourners leaving flowers and tributes, many Episcopal churches offered opportunities for local residents to respond.

"We were just delighted" with the response, a spokesperson for the British consul general said in Chicago. "It answered so many needs for so many people," she said in a newspaper interview.

In New York, the Diocese of New York and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine moved their planned memorial service from the cathedral to the North Meadow of Central Park to accommodate the large numbers of people expected to attend.

Elsewhere, hundreds of Denver-area residents crossed a flower-strewn vestibule at St. John's Cathedral to attend a service organized by the Daughters of the British Empire. Joining Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, Wilma, people of East Indian descent, Hispanics, and other nationalities listened to Dean Charles Kiblinger's sermon, signed condolence books, and wept as a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace."

The same story was played out in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Dallas, Texas, where 600 mourners joined British expatriates. "I thought we were the only ones who felt it," said one English-born woman in a newspaper interview. "It really, really helped us. People told us.. 'we share your loss.'"

A beam of light

Cadets from The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, served as acolytes in a service at the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in Charleston. Members of civic organizations and other denominations participated in the ecumenical service in which Bishop Edward Salmon, Jr. presided.

At historic Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, members of The British Club said they were "grateful [for] this chance to come together to share our great sorrow both with each other and with the American public."

While some commentators expressed scorn for the unusual outpouring of grief, and questioned turning Diana into "an earthly saint," Episcopal clergy such as the Rev. Caryl Marsh of St. Paul's in Salt Lake City, Utah, noted in their sermons or homilies that Diana "was a beam of light in a world that in so many ways is in darkness, a symbol of compassion in a world in which it is sadly lacking."

Mother Teresa also mourned

Many churches combined their memorial services to include Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who founded a world-wide religious order dedicated to serving the poor, outcasts, and dying in Calcutta.

The 87-year-old, Nobel Prize-winning nun died five days after Diana of heart failure. Many homilists compared the two lives -- one glamorous and troubled, the other simple and self-giving.

"In Mother Teresa deep and compelling spirituality was combined with a practical application of faith," said Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey. "I am sure that these were the qualities that drew Princess Diana and others to hold her in such affection."

Tributes to the tiny nun poured out of religious offices around the world. "In a world where the gap between rich and poor continues to increase, where millions are denied basic human rights and justice is a stranger to entire nations, the world will honor the memory of Mother Teresa best by its commitment to eradicate the greed and exploitation which creates, for the majority of the world's people, so much suffering of body, mind and soul," said Dr. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

"Her gentleness and strength, her gifts of endurance and loving service become models of hope and promise for all who pursue the journey of faithful service," said Dr. Joan Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in New York. "We praise God for Mother Teresa, a saint for our time."

The Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, secretary of the Anglican Communion, said from his offices in London, "Her ardent faith and her deep compassion are something that will be remembered for generations to come. Her greatest gift to us is not only the admonition to work for the poor, but to love the poor, the outcast."

"In a hurting world, where enormous problems make it hard not to lose heart, Mother Teresa encouraged us by giving vibrant witness that one person can make a difference." said Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. "We never had any doubt that her loving labor among those ignored, and even despised, was an obedient response to her Lord. May her faithful witness inspire our own."

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