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Columbia Bishop to TEC Presiding Bishop, "We have outcasts here"
"THERE WILL BE NO OUTCASTS IN THIS CHURCH" - Mrs. Jefferts Schori
November 6, 2007
I received with real joy and hope these words from our Primate, The Most Rev. Katherina Jefferts Eschori, commenting about the meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans, last September 20 to 25-07. Unfortunately it was not what a majority of the people of this diocese saw, heard and experienced, at her resent pastoral visit to Bogotá last July.
Neither it is what I read recently on a consultation to the Church Pension Group, by Mrs. Nelida Rivera, from the Rev. Gabriel Sierra, signing as an "EXCLUDED" (outcast), whom Bishop Francisco Duque, diocesan of Colombia, threatened October 24-07, in a labor Court of Bogotá, in front of the Sierra´s attorney, with these words: "I gave you an inability pension and you have been receiving this for more tan tow years; now I am going to take it away, because you have the Church on a trial in a labor court".
What we have to take in account is that the Rev. Sierra is asking for his labor rights, unknown and denied by the diocesan, and his advisers.
The Primate Bishop, can have the best good will of eliminating all kind of exclusions in the Church, but while we have bishops assuming exclusive behaviors as Bishop Duque uses to do, these words of the Presiding Bishop will sound as Paul said: "No more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell" (l- Cor. 13-1). This is the right time for the Presiding Bishop with her words and her example, to lead all these bishops who believe that they are the arbiter of the life, honor and good will of their clergyman, to recognize that the pastoral administration is not threatening, neither closing the doors to those whom they consider inconvenient, because they have the evangelical courage of telling them the truth.
Bernardo Merino Botero
Resigned Bishop of Colombia.
