Archbishop Michael Lewis has spent Palm Sunday and Holy Week in Baghdad more than any other place during the last sixteen years of his time as Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, and it has a special resonance for him. When he first came here the situation was very tense. There had been a recent atrocity in the grounds of St George’s church which had caused death and injury. The journey from the airport was routinely in an armoured convoy. Armed church members roamed the grounds on the lookout for snipers in the collapsed buildings all around. Yet hundreds of people came, heroically to church each week, for worship, for food, for hope.
It costs a lot to be in church
Archbishop Michael Lewis
he said on Sunday after celebrating the Palm Sunday Eucharist for over a hundred people.
The Bishop said he had been particularly heartened and humbled to see the continued presence of young people in the St George’s community, and the establishment of the School of the Redeemer had been a special and encouraging achievement.
Though security in the city has changed for the better, the situation is still militarized and checkpoints and barriers, let alone the chronic political standstill remind everyone that normaility is some way off.
In the meantime the whole Diocese celebrates the honour of an MBE recently awarded to the parish priest Canon Faiz Jerjes at a ceremony in the British Embassy, for his contributions to peace-building and services to Baghdad's Anglican, Christian and local community.
The Church runs clinics and food distribution programmes among its community enhancing work, but the need is great. This will be the last Palm Sunday at which the Archbishop celebrates the Eucharist as Bishop of the Diocese. He retires in June. He said
As I looked out in the Palm Sunday liturgy on the hundred and more worshippers, I reflected on the enormity of the challenges they face. The economy may be just a little better than before but not so much as to have percolated to the largely poor and disadvantaged who make up the bulk of this congregation. Yet they come.