Retiring Archbishop Drexel Gomez calls for compassion: CEN 5.02.08 p 7.

In his final address before retirement to the House of Bishops and Standing Committee of the Church of the Province of the West Indies, Archbishop Drexel Gomez urged the Church to reawaken to the power of God’s love.

The dry and distant Anglicanism of many parts of the West Indies, must make way for a “more caring and compassionate” church, he told the West Indian bishops and the congregation of St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Bridgetown, Barbados on April 17.

“We must face up to the challenge to see where we stand in love,” Archbishop Gomez said, and “must devise more strategies to assist members in their engagement with God and to foster a deeper commitment” that would transform the believer and society.

The rampant individualism and selfishness of Western culture was the greatest single threat to the faith. Believers must surrender their lives to God and be faithful to his will for their lives, rather than pursue their own moral, political or social agendas.

The Church faces “the challenge of discernment and commitment” as it entered the Twenty-first century, he said, urging the bishops to hold fast to the faith once delivered, and not succumb to the siren song of culture.

The senior serving Primate of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Gomez was elected Bishop of Barbados in 1972 and was translated to the Diocese of Nassau and the Bahamas in 1995, and elected Archbishop and Primate of the West Indies in 1999. He will retire at the end of this year.

The Bishop of Barbados, the Rt. Rev. John Holder praised Archbishop Gomez for his constancy and faithfulness. He had been at the “heart of the fight” in the Anglican Communion’s battles over doctrine and discipline and had offered “outstanding leadership as the church wrestled and searched for a way forward.”

Archbishop Gomez’s labours amidst a “difficult, contentious and painful” fight to hold the church together had ensured that future generations “could call themselves Anglicans.”