Archbishop expresses shock over Israeli attack on hospital

Eighteen months after the Hamas attack of October 2023 triggered Israel's disproportionately brutal war on Gaza and its civilains, it comes as a new shock to hear that the Israel Defence Forces have bombed part of the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City. 

The Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which operates the Ahli Arab Hospital, reports that two missile strikes demolished a two-storey laboratory and damaged the pharmacy and emergency department buildings. 

The Diocese says: “A mere twenty minutes prior to the attack, the Israeli army ordered all patients, employees, and displaced people to immediately evacuate the hospital premises prior to its bombing.” It adds that a child who previously suffered a head-injury died as a result of an evacuation process that had to be rushed.

The attack – the fifth during this war, and carried out on Palm Sunday – is outrageous. The Israeli claim that the hospital was a Hamas “command and control centre” rings hollow in the wake of the untruths around their March 23 killings of emergency workers in Gaza. A broad swath of international public opinion no longer believes Israeli protestations of innocence. 

It weighs heavily on my soul that the Israeli government is now pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, in contravention of international law and with the connivance of the United States. A call to all those prepared to listen is urgent and important. 

The full text of a statement issued by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem follows. 

News reports relevant to this statement can be found here:

Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack - BBC 

and here: 

Israeli air strike destroys part of last fully functional hospital in Gaza City - BBC

Address to American and South African youth at the Tutu Legacy Foundation, Cape Town

 

Bridging Borders to Prosperity by Empowering Youth for Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship

A Shared Interest event in partnership with The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

Remarks by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

April 7, 2025

Shared Interest is a New York-based organisation which grew out of  efforts by anti-apartheid activists to support South African before apartheid ended, and now aims to empower global social impact leaders in the U.S. and Southern Africa to foster entrepreneurial innovation and sustainable development. As part of this commitment, it hosted an inaugural Shared Interest Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Partners Delegation in Cape Town from April 6–11, 2025. The inter-generational experience connected HBCU students, donors, and South African leaders to advance youth entrepreneurship, sustainable investments, and cultural and educational exchanges.

Good morning to you all, and thank you very much to Shared Interest and the Tutu Legacy Foundation for welcoming me and hosting this round-table today. Shared Interest and its founders have played an extraordinary role in supporting, first, our struggle for political liberation and then, after we overcame apartheid, our struggle for economic liberation. Led initially by Donna Katzin, you have stuck with us, even when the going has been rough and our democratically-elected government has messed up. We are deeply grateful to you.

And please allow me to add my welcome to those of you visiting South Africa, and especially those from historically black institutions in the United States. We meet at a time when all of us face an uncertain future. During my lifetime, we have experienced many such moments in South Africa, but I have to say, little did we ever expect that the uncertainty would be created by the world's biggest economy.

This means that, more than ever before, we—both South Africans and Americans—are in same boat. We share many of the same fears for the future, particularly in the economic sphere. And I dare say that you who are from the United States may well still have similar challenges to ours in breaking through what we might call the “racial glass ceiling” when it comes to making your way in the world as entrepreneurs and professionals seeking equal opportunities in society. It is a matter of deep regret to us in South Africa, where redress for past discrimination and exclusion is built into our Constitution, to see what is happening to similar measures in the United States.

But, having first noted and recorded the difficulties we all face right now, let me turn to my main thesis today, which is one based on hope and confidence for the future. Why do I say that? Well, it's because at every turning point in society, young people such as yourselves—young people with new ideas, new purpose, new energy—have been those who have turned despair into hope, who have campaigned for change, and who have brought it about.

Take, for example, what happened in the 1980s, when we were fighting apartheid. In the years when President Reagan was refusing to impose sanctions against apartheid, young Americans on university campuses played a large role in the campaign against his policies – a campaign so successful that when Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, and President Reagan vetoed it, Republicans joined Democrats in overriding the veto, inflicting on the president the worst foreign policy defeat of his term of office.

You, the young people of both our societies, are the drivers of innovation and the catalysts of change. In South Africa, the generation of 1976, starting with 14-year-olds in the junior secondary schools of Soweto, precipitated a youth rebellion which unleashed the final revolution which brought down apartheid. And if we could beat apartheid in South Africa, upheld as it was by the most powerful military force in Africa, then we can overcome the challenges we face now. So the next question is: reinforced with this confidence, what is it that should guide what we are aiming to do?

I have been distressed to read a transcript of a recent interview given to the American podcaster Joe Rogan by the South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk. In the interview, Mr Musk said, and I quote: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” While he claimed to think that “empathy is good,” he also described it as “a bug in Western civilization” which was, in his words, being “weaponized”.¹

Let's set aside his apparent obsession with Western civilization, whatever you might believe that to be, and focus on his identification of empathy as a weakness. Listen instead to these words: “In our African idiom we say: 'A person is a person through other persons.' None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. The solitary, isolated human being really is a contradiction in terms.”

Listen also to these words: “The first law of our being is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation. We are meant to live as sisters and brothers, as members of one family, the human family, God’s family. We are created for peace, for harmony, for togetherness. All kinds of things go horribly, badly wrong when we flout that fundamental law..."

The words, of course, are those of Desmond Tutu, and they describe a way of living with empathy as its core. Our experience in South Africa—the experience of those who have lived here all their lives, of those who stayed and fought apartheid, even when they could have left—is the reverse of a philosophy which fears empathy, and is suspicious of those who show it.

What held us together under apartheid; what has held us together in the most turbulent years of three decades of democracy; what has enabled us to flourish when we have done so; and what enables societies to flourish economically is in fact empathy. For what is the purpose of economic activity? It's not about money for money's sake. Money, as we all know, doesn't buy us personal happiness. Each one of us lives in relationship with others, so our economic activity is worthless unless it is about ensuring human flourishing, which can be achieved only by working for the common good.

In South Africa, a lot of young people tell me that the promises of democracy are not being realised. When we look at much of what is happening in public life, I can understand their disillusionment, and why they are opting out of public life. But that is not the answer to our crisis. It will not secure our future. I always urge young South Africans to dig into the radical roots of the old struggle against apartheid, and dare to dream and work for a country in which there is justice, equity and equality of opportunity. Once we achieve those, we will take off economically.

What kind of economy will achieve human flourishing and promote the common good. Some years ago I attended a high-level school on governance, economics and management in Hong Kong, which looked at how to achieve a new “economy of life”. Such an economy would replace the current global governance of money with financial systems which are less exploitative and share resources and income more equitably.

All of us, but especially you as young people, need to develop initiatives such as this to help you challenge old stereotypes and find new ways of making an ever more complex and fast-paced world into an ethical and sustainable place for all.

So let me conclude with these words: please, young South Africans, please, young Americans, please, young people everywhere: dare to dream and work for a world in which there is justice, equity and equality of opportunity, a world of flourishing economies and therefore peaceful, harmonious societies.

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1https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-joe-rogan-experience/2281-elon-musk

A Prayer for the victims of rape in schools

Amid a national outcry over the rape of learners at school, and the slow response in investigating the cases, the Archbishop has issued the following prayer:

God, our Creator and Sustainer, 

With heavy hearts, we prostrate ourselves before your throne of grace,

Our only hope being in you when all organs of the State appear to be failing in their duties.

We bring before you the child victims of barbaric sexual and other abuse in our land,

We pray especially today for those whose lives have been touched by the alleged rapes of a seven-year-old in the Eastern Cape and a 13-year-old in Limpopo,

We bring the victims and their families before you for strength, consolation and healing,

We ask that their families will experience your power and your guidance,

And that your presence will be felt in the schools in which they trusted.

God, they are but children who bear your image as part of this, your world,

A world which you declared to be good and pleasing to you when you created it.

As Jesus, your Son, prayed for his disciples,

So God, we now pray for the victims in these cases, who belong to you, and to you alone,

Keep them safe in this cruel world by the power of your name (Jn 17: 9-11).

As we share at this moment in the anguish of victims and their families,

May you, our God, also groan with us, as we your children, offer this prayer in faith.

As we stand in solidarity with the families of all victims of abuse,

May your unfathomable love envelop the families of these victims now,

May your Holy Spirit protect and guide our communities,

And bring us to union with Christ as we transform and re-create our institutions of learning. 

Lord in your mercy,  

Hear our prayers and heal our country. 

Amen.

††Thabo Cape Town

"Like a cancer, economic inequality is metastasizing across the world" - Archbishop Thabo Makgoba's Geneva address

6th Meeting of the Ecumenical Panel on a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA)

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

Opening Prayer and Reflection

John Knox Centre, Geneva

25-27 March 2025

The Ecumenical Panel on NIFEA convened for its 6th meeting to address the growing global economic inequality, climate catastrophe, and explore alternative economic systems in this Jubilee year. This collaborative effort between the World Council of Churches, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Lutheran World Federation, World Methodist Council, and Council for World Mission brings together experts in economics, finance, sociology, and theology to chart a path toward a more just and sustainable economic architecture.

A little over eight years ago, I addressed the ruling Synod of the church which I lead, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, on my attendance in Hong Kong at the first Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management, an initiative of the organisations you represent here. What is particularly interesting when I look back on my words today is that my reflections were based on the unstated assumption that the new “economy of life” that we were urging at that meeting was something primarily of benefit to the Global South.

I told the Synod that in Hong Kong we were looking at how we could find an alternative to the current global governance of money and financial systems, replacing it with a system that would be less exploitative and would distribute resources and income more equitably. I called on our bishops and our theologians to explore a theology and ecclesiology of generosity—focussing on the Incarnation as hermeneutical conversation of theology and economy, developing if you like a social teaching on the economy.

My objective was for the church to encourage young people in particular to dare to challenge old stereotypes and find new ways of making this ever more complex and fast-paced world into an ethical and sustainable place for all. I wanted new generations of the young in the Global South to become advocates of a new form of global governance and a new economic model, and to seek practical ways to transform the market economy from a self-serving mechanism for elites to one which serves our environment and all the world's people.

To illustrate my argument, I pointed to how the skewed ordering of the South African economy lay at the heart of the political crisis that we faced, and still face in my country. In South Africa, inherited patterns of privilege and wealth which were overwhelmingly associated with one racial group, had created an economy which spat in the face of Gospel values. However, at the time I was speaking, the dominant faction of our post-apartheid ruling party had chosen not to respond to the maldistribution of resources by allocating them for the benefit of the poor. Instead they were directing them to an elite group with links to a small number of politicians and officials. In other words, a new breed of private interests joined the old beneficiaries of apartheid, to capture the public purse and to line their own pockets.

But as I say, my primary focus was on the way in which the skewed allocation of resources affected the Global South. Now when I look back on what I said, and see what is happening in the Global North, it is almost with a sense of shock that I realise that we in the South are not the only victims of the current ordering of the global economy. We now realise that what Desmond Tutu used to call the “so-called ordinary people” – “so-called,” he said “because in my theology, nobody is ordinary, all are created in the image of God” – that average men and women in the world's most powerful and prosperous economies, are just as much victims of the greed of self-serving elites who hold wield economic and political power for their own benefit as the poor in the South.

Of course the global financial crisis of 2008 gave us some warning of this, but it is especially since 2016, when I attended that meeting in Hong Kong, that the devastating consequences of inequality and the hoarding of power and resources for the benefit of a few have become apparent not just to the Global South but to economically developed nations as well. We have seen the rise to power of oligarchs in countries which we imagined were democracies – flawed democracies as they might have been, but democracies which aspired to reflect the views and the interests of all their people.

Across the world, now including Europe and the United States, we see the phenomenon of what we might call the “left-behinds” – those who stand on the margins, watching elites prospering while their standard of living is eroded. We see those people turning toward solutions reflecting economic chauvinism, xenophobic political nationalism, woven in with resurgent racism and even the stirrings of a new kind of fascism. We see our faith perverted and transformed into a narrow Christian nationalism which seeks to demonize “the other”, and whose adherents struggle to accept the teachings of Jesus concerning “turning the other cheek”. And in an age-old pattern, elites – through their dominance of the media and public debate – exploit divisions and divert people's anger so that it targets not those responsible for inequality and injustice, but the vulnerable, the poor and the weak; those even less fortunate than they.Like a cancer, economic inequality is metastasizing across the world

, eating away at our social compacts, threatening to devour our very being, everything that which makes us human. We face, I believe, a kairos moment for humanity.

In August 1993, the then Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered an early contribution to the church debate which preceded the landmark Jubilee 2000 campaign, the campaign which, taken up by wider civil society, is credited with cancellation of more than $100 billion dollars of debt owed by 35 of the world's poorest countries.¹ Delivering an address on “Kairos and the Jubilee Year in Uppsala” in Sweden, Archbishop Tutu unpacked the theology underlying the concept of Jubilee. He began by pointing out that “the Jubilee year described in Leviticus 25 propounds theology that—like all good theology should do—has profound implications for how we should order our political, economic, social relations.”

Noting how the world's churches had successfully campaigned to end apartheid, he urged the ecumenical community to “invest as much passion and zeal in calling for the cancellation of the foreign debt” as we had for the campaign against apartheid. “This,” he declared, “is the new moral issue to which we must be committed.” Archbishop Tutu's successor, and my predecessor, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, went on to campaign for the cancellation of debt as part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign.

In similar vein, over the last decade I have campaigned in South Africa for the old struggle—the struggle against apartheid—to be replaced by what I call “the New Struggle”, a struggle for the promises of democracy to be realised. Now, as the ecumenical community grapples with the implications of the scandalous gap between the rich and the poor, and with a world increasingly characterised by growing xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism, we need to launch a new struggle, one of a different kind, an international campaign for the reform of financial and economic governance.

If all are to have life, and to have life in abundance, as Jesus taught, we have a shared responsibility—across the regions of the world, across political divisions, across cultural and religious diversity, and across economic and social differences—to transform the global economic order into one which serves the interests of all and thus guarantees a future for the coming generations.

The challenges we face on a global, regional and local level are similar and related: poverty and inequality; rapid technological changes; protection of the environment and natural resources; interfaith and inter-cultural cooperation; strengthening democracy and social justice; addressing the causes of migration and displacement. Through dialogue and conversations with leading religious, political, business and civil society leaders, we must strive to foster better understanding of the complexity of the challenges we face, strengthen mutual cooperation and trust and facilitate common action through partnerships.

As Pope Francis has so bluntly and eloquently stated: “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or for that matter, to any problems.”

And the justice that we need to work for includes climate justice: we have to be good stewards of the whole of creation by working to mitigate the effect of climate change, not least for the sake of the poor and marginalised. Again, I quote Pope Francis, this time on the link between ending poverty and working for climate justice: “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental,” and “There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.”

Allow me to end this reflection and continue our day's discussions with the following prayer:

Let us pray:

Creating, liberating, healing and sustaining source of all that is,

Thank you for your love and your trust in us, enabling us to embody your attributes of justice-making, earth-relishing love and to steadfastly commit to transform injustice into ways of living that nourish dignity and freedom from oppression.

Heal and transform the pain of those suffering unrelentness bombardment in Gaza, as well as victims of conflict in the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Sudan, the Sahel, Mozambique, the DR Congo, Ukraine and Russia.

Grant our global political leaders compassion and empathy and empower all leaders, including those in faith communities, to bring healing to the wounded, relief to those who suffer and comfort to all who mourn.

As we gather today, we pray that you will lead our discussions help us find ways to motivate all those involved in current conflicts to work for justice and lasting peace amongst your people.

Living God, in times of crisis throughout the ages, we have prayed to you for the peaceful, negotiated settlement of conflicts, and you have granted our petitions.

We have prayed for freedom for the oppressed and marginalised, and you have answered our prayers.

Now, when people are again dying violently each day in our communities,

When people die as a result of a lack of clean water and nourishing food,

We pray for unity and collegiality as we seek your guidance and wisdom in addressing the challenges we face.

May the needs of those on the margins be at the heart of our engagements and explorations;

May the interests of power and politics take second place to those of peace, stability and prosperity.

Guide and support all who work for peace,

Strengthen the agency of people of goodwill,

And bless us with your presence among us.

For you live and reign, one God, world without end.

Amen.

1https://www.advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000

Ad Laos - To the People of God – March 2025

Adapted from the March 2025 edition of Good Hope, the newsletter of the Diocese of Cape Town.

Dear People of God,

As we observe the Season of Lent, I wanted to share with you some reflections on this year's February meeting of the Synod of Bishops. (You can find our full statement here: https://anglicanchurchsa.org/communique-from-the-synod-of-bishop-february-2025/

The first item on our agenda was a meeting of the Bishops with the Canon Law Council and Diocesan Chancellors and Registrars, which meant that our normal meeting of two dozen bishops was supplemented on the first day by nearly 60 people, mostly lawyers. Changes to our Canons, for example in the form of detailed Pastoral Standards, and the influence of South Africa’s new labour legislation on church law, has brought about a transformation in the church in recent decades. Our joint meeting reflected this, and underlined the importance of integrating the observance of basic legal principles into pastoral ministry.  

Most of the meeting was given over to a briefing by Advocate Ewald de Villiers Jansen SC, who chairs the new, formally-appointed Safe and Inclusive Church Commission. We also commissioned members of the Commission who were present.

The Commission now includes Bishop Brian Marajh, appointed by the Synod of Bishops as Liaison Bishop, the Deputy Provincial Registrar, Canon Rosalie Manning—who in an act of great dedication to our church has taken the lead in launching safeguarding in recent years—as well as two psychologists, Ms Sharitha Poodhun and Ms Nokubonga Phakathi, and two retired bishops, Bishop Margaret Vertue, a long-time campaigner against the abuse of women, girls and boys, and Bishop Eddie Daniels, formerly of Port Elizabeth. The Provincial Treasurer and Provincial Executive Officer also serve ex officio.

In its first communication to the Province, the newly-appointed Commission has called for every parish in the Province to consider appointing two safeguarding officers. It has already scheduled three online training sessions in April and May, and has charted a way ahead which includes screening, assessing and training those to be licensed as safeguarding officers in parishes, archdeaconries and dioceses. For more details, including advice on who should serve on safeguarding teams, I urge you to read the Commission’s first circular>>

Among important contributions to the Synod of Bishops, we also heard a plea from Dr Mamphela Ramphele to step up our efforts to combat abuse and gender-based violence (adapted for use in the ecumenical community here), and presentations by Bishop Luke Pato on a new book arising from the authors’ concern that spiritual direction is diminishing in the church, leading to a decline in our capacity to follow a moral compass. Also of note was a presentation by Roman Catholic theologians, including recently-retired Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg, who argued against the compatibility of ancestral worship with Christianity. 

In recent decades, growth in the church has resulted in a move away from appointing Suffragan Bishops, and towards establishing new dioceses. This process began with the “multiplication” of the dioceses of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, starting more than 30 years ago, and more recently with the former Diocese of St John’s becoming the dioceses of Mthatha, Mzimvubu and Mbhashe, and Khahlamba being carved out of the Diocese of Grahamstown.

The Diocese of Natal has now chosen to follow a different route. After long and careful consideration over the past four years, it decided last year that it wanted to maintain diocesan unity. In consequence, the Synod of Bishops has approved the election of a Suffragan Bishop to help deal with the administrative and pastoral challenges of a Diocese stretching from Griqualand East to the borders of the Free State and Mpumalanga.

In another development, our Province and the Diocese of Botswana are discussing the possibility of that diocese joining us. Until now, Botswana has been part of the Church of the Province of Central Africa, but at their recent Provincial Synod, they decided to form separate provinces for Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The inclusion of Botswana in ACSA needs a lot of thought and work, and ultimately the approval of the Anglican Communion.

A number of bishops have retired recently, and so I ask you to pray for Elective Assemblies in the dioceses of Port Elizabeth on May 8 and 9, Pretoria, May 15-16, Grahamstown, June 20-21, Natal (for the Suffragan Bishop) on July 17-18, and Johannesburg later this year.

Lenten blessings to you all,

††Thabo Cape Town

Sermon for Cape Town Diocesan Family Day Service - Transfiguration Sunday

Diocesan Family Day Service

Transfiguration Sunday

St George's Grammar School, Mowbray

2^nd MARCH 2025

Readings: Exodus 34: 29 – 35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3: 12 – 4:2; Luke 9: 28- 36

May I speak in the name of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dear Bishop Josh, clergy colleagues, dear people of God, I greet you all this morning as we break bread together in this family service. Thank you everyone for coming together to meet as a Diocese. Thank you to the diocesan office staff and the logistics committee who put together the programme for our time together today. A special thank you also to the Diocesan Liturgical Team, as well as all those who have planned this celebratory service. Thank you also to the principal, staff and Council of St George's Grammar School for opening the school and grounds to host us.

Busy as I often am with ministry in the wider Anglican Church of Southern Africa and beyond, it’s wonderful for me to be home in the Diocese and part of this service, meeting as a family. We last met virtually on the Feast of St Thomas in 2020, under the difficult circumstances when Covid-19 was hitting our communities and the world. We had to meet then to affirm the presence of God amidst the challenges we faced at the time. This year, we meet on Transfiguration Sunday as we prepare ourselves for the beginning of our Lenten journey.

The Gospel reading (Luke 9:28ff) gives us a picture of what happened at the Transfiguration of Jesus in the presence of Peter, John and James. As Jesus was praying on a mountain, His appearance and garments took a heavenly brilliance, and He was joined by two men who had long departed from this world. These men spoke to Jesus about his departure, that is his death and resurrection, thus confirming the prophesy made in v. 22 ‘that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, be killed and on the third day be raised’.

Jewish tradition expected the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah to reappear at the end of time. They represented the law and the prophets, and both had unusual departures from this world. This explains why, in this Gospel passage, Peter suggested to Jesus that he, John and James should build three tabernacles or dwellings, one each for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, either to honour the three or to prolong their stay up on the mountain.

However, Peter had misunderstood the purpose of the presence of the two men who had come to speak to Jesus. The true significance of their presence was found in the heavenly voice that assured the disciples that the Jesus whom they confessed to be the Messiah was indeed the Son of God, not despite his coming ordeal – his appearance before Pilate and his agonising death on a cross – but because of it. The real message to the disciples was that they were to obey Him – and Him alone.

Sisters and brothers, the assurance that our reading from Luke gives us, namely that Jesus is the Son of God, helps explain Paul’s bold confidence, reflected in the reading from Corinthians that the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor 3:12ff). Unlike Moses, who according to Exodus (Ex 34:32ff) had to put a veil over his face to hide the fading radiance, in Christ the veil is set aside. All of us, whether we are prominent or obscure, good or bad, white or black, have the privilege of looking upon the glory of the Lord – our Father as revealed in Christ – with unveiled faces.

As people of this Diocese, what can we draw from today’s readings? What does the story of the Transfiguration mean to us today? What can we do to remove the veils that stop us from seeing the image of God in our neighbours?

Last Monday, at a meeting of our church’s Synod of Bishops, which is attended by bishops from across Southern Africa, we heard a powerful appeal from Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a prominent member of our church and a member of the Order of Simon of Cyrene, the highest honour we can give to lay Anglicans.

Speaking passionately from the heart, Dr Ramphele told us of new research which shows that one in three women in South Africa have experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Twenty-four percent have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner. And research also shows that nearly seven in 10 men believe that wives must obey husbands, and 15 percent say husbands have a right to punish their wives for wrongdoing.

Our society, Dr Ramphele said, is in the grip of an epidemic of gender-based violence that affects the majority of families in every community. To address this crisis, she called on the churches of our land to develop new ways of ministering to people who are deeply wounded by the multi-generational traumas they have suffered since colonial and apartheid days.

Against that background, it is my earnest hope that we will experience this wonderful celebration here at St George’s Grammar School today as a mountain-top experience; one that prepares us to leave here, metaphorically speaking, with shining faces, transfigured and transformed, ready to tell the world of God’s love in Jesus Christ and to live out our faith in ways which will bring healing to all God’s people in every community in this Diocese.

In order to help bring that healing to our communities, we must, as I said in the latest edition of Good Hope, start by cleaning our own house first. Last November, when the Church of England revealed the horrific abuse perpetrated in Britain and Zimbabwe by one of our former congregants, an expatriate from the UK, I told you that the Diocese and I are accountable to you, our church members, and to society, to ensure that all our churches are safe spaces in which to worship and minister.

Accordingly, the Synod of Bishops on Tuesday unanimously endorsed a set of proposals to keep you safe. Most important for you in the parishes, we will be asking every parish to nominate Safe Church Officers, to be trained under the auspices of the Safe and Inclusive Church Commission. We will require the names of those officers to be listed in parish service bulletins or, where those are not produced, to be posted to your noticeboards. While people will still be able to report abuse to a central office operated by our Safe and Inclusive Church Commission, we want to mobilise teams of experienced lay people who know their parishes best to play a leading role in protecting others.

Friends, the splendour of Paul’s God-given ministry of the new covenant, superior to that of Moses, spurs him on. It is the undeserved gift of God’s mercy, for Paul fully realizes his own unworthiness. What is a family in Jesus’ eyes? Those that are doing the will of God (Matt 12:50). In other words, the relationships that count are not physical, but moral and spiritual. It is to belong with Him to the family of the one Father in heaven and to do His will. It is my hope that we can be that family of Jesus.

It’s been a difficult few months in the Diocese, but as I’ve said before, we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by setbacks. We’ve taken the first step to overcome our difficulties by identifying what the problems were, and now we must move forward in hope, and trusting in God.

Let us also keep our focus on the other, major challenges that affect every one of us in our society. Pray that we will recognise that the chasm between the rich and poor cannot be tolerated any longer, and that we will act on that recognition. As we prepare for Lent, our New Struggle as South Africans must be to regain our moral compass, end economic inequality, bring about equality of opportunity and realise the promises enshrined in our Constitution and hope for a better future.

Let us also re-dedicate ourselves to the struggle against complacency, greed, nepotism, and the lust for power. Let us intensify the struggle against the pursuit of narrow self-interest, personal gain, status, and material wealth – a pursuit we see reflected in the attitudes towards our country and our achievements displayed by ideologues in the Trump Administration who reflect apartheid-era thinking. As demonstrated in the recent letter to Americans by more than 400 white South African Christian leaders, the groups claiming to represent Afrikaners who risk inflaming racial tensions by appealing for foreign intervention against our government constitute an unrepresentative minority of our people; the vast majority of South Africans are committed to the struggle for true justice, including economic justice.

In conclusion, I invite you this Lent to turn to loving ways and to become conduits of God's peace. This year's Provincial Lenten Bible Studies, which you can download from the ACSA website, are a wonderful resource for thinking and praying over what it means to be a peacemaker in South Africa today.

God loves you, and so do I. God bless this Diocese, South Africa and the world. Amen.

* * * * *