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Bomb shakes
Sri Lankan bishop’s home, but not his resolve for unity
BY
PAT McCAUGHAN
Someone
was unhappy with the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Fernando’s efforts at reconciling the
warring ethnic and religious factions in his native Sri Lanka— unhappy
enough to lob a bomb at the bishop’s home one night.
His household was shaken by
the blast, but his family and his resolve to bring peace to his homeland
were un-harmed, and he has continued to speak out for reconciliation and
peace, he told recent gatherings at the Clergy Conference in Long Beach and
at Our Saviour Church, San Gabriel.
Sri Lanka’s 52,500-member
Anglican community constitutes a mere .3% of the nation’s 17 million people
and only about 3% of its entire Christian community.
As bishop of the Diocese of
Columbo, Bishop Fernando was a spiritual leader of a vast minority—about 70%
of the population is Buddhist, 15% Hindu, 10% Muslim and 10% Christian. In a
country where religious differences can fuel political clashes, he quickly
assessed his situation.
“I realized a very long
time ago that we have a very important part to play in bringing about peace
in our country, but that a Christian minority could do very little, so we
had to build better interfaith relationships. I went to temples. I went to
shrines. I got to know the Hindu and Buddhist clergy very well,” he said.
Now retired, Bishop
Fernando hopes to convey that knowledge globally, and to enlist people of
faith to help transform a post-Sept. 11 world. Archbishop of Canterbury
George Carey has appointed him a director of NIFCON, or Network of
Interfaith Concerns, and he aims to tour the United States to raise funds,
to create awareness and to persuade people of faith “to join the bandwagon,”
he told the May 11 gathering in San Gabriel.
NIFCON began in 1994 to
promote interfaith relationships and serve as a clearinghouse for global
interfaith ideas and information. The 1998 Lambeth Conference charged the
organization to study and evaluate Muslim-Christian relations. In addition
to Fernando, directors are the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester,
England, and the Rt. Rev Josiah Fearon of Kaduna, Nigeria.
Bishop Fernando’s
conviction comes from his own efforts to cultivate collegial interfaith
relationships in his homeland, a 25,000-square-mile island in the Indian
Ocean, which existed under 450 years of foreign domination until its 1948
independence. As the new nation struggled to rebuild, severe conflicts
emerged between the Tamils, who are largely Hindu and who make up 20% of the
population, and the 80% majority Sinhalese population, who are primarily
Buddhist. “They speak different languages, they have different cultures,”
says Bishop Fernando. “This bitter conflict has been with us nearly 50
years.”
But Christians in Sri Lanka
have a unique opportunity because “there are Christians in both
communities,” he said. “Christians are the only group that cut across the
ethnic divide. I am very, very happy to claim that there is no ethnic
conflict among Christians. We are a model for the country. it enables us to
go forward and initiate good interfaith relations,” said Bishop Fernando,
noting that while he is Sinhalese, his predecessor was Tamil.
“I am convinced that good
interfaith relations will produce justice and peace in our world,” Fernando
told about 75 people at the San Gabriel gathering.
His faith has been tested.
In
1999, Bishop Fernando accepted the invitations of both the leader of the
‘Tigers’, a Tamil group fighting for independence, and the nation’s
president, to initiate a dialogue between the two groups.
The effort was tricky
because it involved a bus trip to the country’s northern region inhabited by
Bishop Fernando. Some years earlier, 34 Buddhist monks were kidnapped from a
bus traveling in that region and executed by the Tigers.
Nonetheless, Bishop
Fernando invited Buddhist monks to accompany him to the Tigers’ region,
because “nothing gets done in Sri Lanka without their blessing.” The monks
accepted the invitation—an answer to the bishop’s prayers.
“I sat in the front of the
bus, because if anyone was to be harmed, I wanted to be that one,” he said.
No one was harmed, the dialogue was useful, and Bishop Fernando believes the
visit marked a turning point in the conflict.
“When I left there 10 days
ago, things were good,” he said. “There was a cease-fire. There was no
killing, no dying. I hope in June we will be able to go forward with more
peace talks.”
Now his plans for going
forward have gone global.
“We have to work for peace
in the Middle East,” he said. “We are all Christ-ians here. What we can do
is to get together with people of other faiths, to learn with people of
other faiths to be a force for peace, so we can together build a better
world.
Bishop Fernando, whose
other U. S. stops included San Francisco, New York, Atlanta and Washington,
D.C., said the strengthening of interfaith relationships can involve
gathering as groups, or can be as simple as sharing a cup of coffee because
“respect begets respect. If we learn to respect people of other faiths, they
will respect us.
“There are so many
conflicts in various parts of the world today and all, without exception,
have a religious component, even if they are not a religious conflict,” he
said. “So religion, rather than being part of the solution, is part of the
problem. We have to change that to insure that religion will be a factor for
good.”
For more information log
onto NIFCON’s web site at
www.anglicannifcon.org or
www.anglicancommunion.org
To assist Bishop
Fernando’s efforts, contact The Church of Our Saviour at 626.282.5147.
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PHOTO: CHERYL COUGHLYN
CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Canon Denis O’Pray, rector of
Our Saviour Church, San Gabriel; Bishop Kenneth Fernando, retired bishop of
Colombo, Sri Lanka; and the Rev. Peter Rood, priest-in-charge of Holy
Nativity, Westchester, pause during a discussion at San Gabriel gathering in
support of NIFCON, the Network for Interfaith Concerns.
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