PostedSeptember 23, 2022, 5:59 PM
EnglandPriest and lesbian, daughter of Desmond Tutu banned from ceremony
The Church of England has decided: Mpho, the daughter of the South African Nobel Peace Prize winner, will not be able to officiate at the funeral of her godfather. The Church has been roundly criticized on social media.
Mpho Tutu-van Furth was due to celebrate his godfather’s funeral mass on Thursday in the Birmingham, England area. But the diocese did not authorize this ceremony.
AFP
Mpho Tutu-van Furth, daughter of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, who works as a priest in the United States, within the Episcopal Church, has been banned from celebrating a funeral in England, because she is married to a woman, we learned on Friday. She was due to celebrate her godfather’s funeral mass on Thursday in the Birmingham area. But the diocese did not authorize this ceremony.
“We recognize that this is a difficult situation. Advice has been given in accordance with current guidance from the House of Bishops on same-sex marriage,” the Diocese of Hereford wrote. The Church of England, which has 85 million followers worldwide, has since 2005 allowed gay men and women united in civil partnership to become priests. But it has been torn for years on the question of the recognition of homosexual unions, between liberal branches, in the United States or the United Kingdom, and conservatives, the majority in Kenya or Nigeria.
“Rude” and “hurtful”
“We all agree that the Christian understanding and doctrine of marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman remains unchanged,” reads a text from the House of Bishops on marriage. between people of the same sex. Questioned by the BBC, Mpho Tutu-van Furth judged this event “really rude and hurtful”. The Church was also strongly criticized on social networks on Friday.
In 2016, the daughter of Desmond Tutu, former Anglican archbishop and hero of the fight once morest apartheid, who died in December 2021, had already been forced to renounce the priesthood in the South African Anglican Church following marrying his companion.
“I wouldn’t worship a homophobic God.”
Desmond Tutu had come out in favor of same-sex marriage. “I wouldn’t worship a homophobic God. I would refuse to go to a homophobic paradise. I am as passionate regarding this campaign as I have ever been regarding apartheid,” the archbishop said during a UN campaign for gay rights in 2013.
(AFP)
