Bishop John’s Lent Appeal this year will be for the Diocese of Peru where the Coronavirus pandemic has hit the people extremely hard.
Peru has no real equivalent to our welfare state, which means that many people have faced the impossible choice between observing lockdown and earning enough for food and basic essentials.
Obviously it is the poor who have been hardest hit and these are the communities in which most diocesan work takes place.
As a result, the Diocese of Peru has had almost no income and clergy have been receiving reduced stipends at best. Some months they have simply not been paid. Services were banned from March until November, so there was little opportunity for clergy to provide for the spiritual needs of the congregations.
However, although the situation has been desperate, there are signs of hope. Four new deacons were ordained in January. Bishop Jorge is working hard to create a sustainable diocese which reflects the best Anglican traditions of pastoral care in some of the poorest communities in Latin America. Any help we can provide this Lent will help with this work, allowing the clergy to undertake their ministry and helping with important social projects in areas which have no other support.
Bishop John said: “This Lent, I am appealing for you, as individuals and parishes, to consider supporting our brothers and sisters in Peru. Bishop Jorge and the Anglican Church in Peru are doing incredible work in the most difficult of circumstances, supporting those in need while receiving only the most basic of stipends. It would be wonderful to remind them that we are praying for their work and offer a contribution to it, perhaps as a way to ‘pay it forward’ and say thanks for the access to healthcare and vaccines we have in the UK.”
To make a donation:
- Visit our online giving page
- Send a cheque payable to Worcester Diocesan Board of Finance Ltd to Peru Appeal, Worcester Diocesan Office, 16 Lowesmoor Wharf, Worcester, WR1 2RS.
Video Transcript
On Ash Wednesday I'd often, in the past, joke with people by saying - I hope they'd have a grueling Lent!
Not this year because Lent seems to have been going on for a very long time - a year!
And we've been deprived of all sorts of things, rather than voluntarily giving them up as a spiritual discipline. It is nevertheless a good idea for us to give thanks and one way we can do that is by remembering that we are so much better off than people elsewhere in the world. This year I'm asking you to contribute to an appeal for our brothers and sisters in Peru, where there's no equivalent of the welfare state and where people have had to make an impossible choice between observing lockdown and going out to work for food and essentials. There's no prospect of a vaccine on the horizon, as there is here. So the church has suffered along with everyone else, clergy have been paid reduced stipends and in some months none at all. So as we give thanks for the fact that we are able to benefit from the National Health Service, that we can be tested, as is happening in the cathedral now behind me, that if we're in a vulnerable group we can be vaccinated and that there is light at the end of the tunnel in this terrible pandemic .
Perhaps we could give thanks for that this Lent as part of our spiritual discipline by giving to those in need. God bless you this Lent.
