AFRICA : FORMER ANGLICAN BISHOP NOW CATHOLIC STAR OF ANTI-APARTHEID MUSICAL

CISA NEWS AFRICA:
in Cisa News
CAPE TOWN, March 30, 2012 (CISA) -A former Anglican bishop ordained a Catholic priest is one of the stars of an anti-apartheid musical in South Africa.
Fr Robert Mercer, 77, was deported from South Africa in 1970 for his stand against apartheid, along with several other Anglican priests.
He and other members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection defied segregation laws by running a multi-racial parish.
They were, says Fr Mercer, “deemed to be a corrupting influence on students” at Stellenbosch University, where they worked as chaplains. One of the Anglican priests was jailed, Catholic Herald reports.
Their stand has been dramatised in a multi-media pop musical called Brothers, which ran for five nights at Stellenbosch University, the country’s top Africaans University.
The musical was performed in September 2010 in a mix of Africaans and English and was directed by playwright Peter Krummeck.
Fr Mercer, who grew up in Zimbabwe, went on to become Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, in the Anglican Province of Central Africa, in the midst of a civil war.
He was bishop for 11 years before leaving the Anglican Communion to join the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion. He served as metropolitan bishop from 1988 to 2005, when he retired to England.
Fr Mercer became a Catholic in January and was ordained a priest for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on March 26.

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