Archbishop’s farewell at Armagh; Belfast Covenant service
Archbishop’s farewell at Armagh
Archbishop Alan Harper took part in his final ceremony as Archbishop in Armagh at a Farewell Eucharist in St Patrick’s Cathedral last Friday night .
Present at the service were the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Bishops of Limerick and Tuam. Bishop Samuel Poyntz , Bishop James Mahaffey and Canon Ken Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican community were also present.
Archbishop Harper who is 68 years old succeeded Lord Eames as Archbishop in January 2007 having served as Bishop of Connor for the previous six years six years..
In a press interview Archbishop Harper said the Queen’s visit to the Republic of Ireland was an amazing highlight of his years as primate. He also expressed pleasure with the progress of the devolved administration at Stormont.
He expressed quiet confidence that the global Anglican Communion would stay together, in spite of the actual theological and cultural differences.
The Church of Ireland Gazette which had attacked the modus of the operation of the four church leaders in the past year, in an editorial tribute, said, ”Archbishop Harper’s heart was matched by his liturgical instinct; his theological reflection by his clear preaching; and his ecclesiastical heart by his administrative abilities.”
On his final day in office the Archbishop will be the preacher at the evening harvest service in the newly built Belfast South Methodist Church and Agape centre on the Lisbon Road in Belfast . His presence is deemed to be further evidence of the outworking of the covenant between the Methodist Church and the C of I.
The text of the Archbishop’s address is at :
http://ireland.anglican.org/news/4236
Belfast Covenant service
Newsletter – of unionists of different hues heard that this coming weekend will indicate if we are ready in Northern Ireland to commemorate a significant watershed during a special Evensong service at St Anne’s Cathedral on Sunday.
Belfast’s Lord Lieutenant Dame Mary Peters was one of the high-profile participants at the service as well as First Minister Peter Robinson, Junior Minister Jonathan Bell, Lord Mayor Gavin Robinson, Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt, Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy, MEPs Diane Dodds and Jim Nicholson, peers Lord Trimble, Lord Empey and Lord Rogan, independent North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon and PUP councillor John Kyle.
Of the main unionist parties, only the Traditional Unionist Voice was not officially represented.
There was a pause at the start of the service to remember the Spence family, which lost three of its members in a tragic farm accident last week, and the two female police officers who were murdered in Manchester last week.
The Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev John Mann, told the congregation that the then Dean of Belfast in 1912, Charles Grierson, was one of almost half-a-million people who signed the Ulster Covenant, but that other high profile Church of Ireland ministers such as Fredrick MacNeice – father of poet Louis MacNeice – and the immediate successor of the Rev Grierson as Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore decided not to sign it.
“For all, it was a plea for, as they saw it, political, economic and religious freedom. What it meant to them and to us may vary from person to person, but the fact of that signing and its immediate effect in Ulster is not in dispute,” he said. “It formalised an aspiration, it confirmed deeply held desires, it expressed a determination that would not be ignored and could not be denied.
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/local/covenant-service-poignant-1-4294528
Belfast Telegraph report at:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/nostalgia/ulster-covenant/dean-of-belfast-ulster-covenant-a-watershed-16215010.html