Transcript of Archbishop Andrew Hutchison’s webcast – December 19, 2005

Welcome once again to Conversations with the Primate.

This will be our last segment for the year 2005. So I thought I'd begin with a brief review of some of the highlights of this past year.

It has of course been a very difficult year in the world, beginning with the tsunami at the first of the year, followed by a series of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, all over the planet. I want to say how grateful I am for the tremendous response from Anglicans across Canada through the Primate’s World Relief Fund to these disasters.

It's been a very busy year for me and throughout the year I've visited a total of 18 dioceses and that’s in addition to the many parish visits that have been made across the country for special events in those parishes. And also traveling abroad to represent you, I've been to 7 different countries.

Here at Church House and in the national church there have been a number of significant things to remember about this year. First of all was the retirement of our general secretary Jim Boyles, and I'm happy to announce now if you’ve not heard it yet, that we have hired a new general secretary in the person of Archdeacon Michael Pollesel presently  executive officer in the diocese of Ontario. Michael will begin his duties with us here in February. Meantime our sincere thanks to Dr. Ellie Johnson who has acted in that capacity since Archdeacon Boyles left us.

Also at the level of your national church budget difficulties have required some cutbacks here at Church House and they’ve been serious. Between 5 and 6 per cent despite a very well managed budget here at the house and unfortunately that did result in the laying off of 7 employees. The principal impact of all of that was on the Anglican Book Centre that now has reorganized and has a radical new business plan and we look for better things during the coming year.

During the year we also appointed a task force on governance. The time may well have come when structures across the country at diocesan level, at provincial level and certainly at national level need to be questioned, as to whether they still serve the church as effectively as they should. So Archbishop David Crawley heads a task force on governance that will very soon be making recommendations to the Council of General Synod. During the year I also appointed Archbishop Terry Finlay as my special envoy on Aboriginal concerns in Canada. That involves a very wide spectrum of responsibilities, and I'm happy to say that he's getting on with that work very well indeed.

Letting Down the Nets is a major financial initiative -- not a financial campaign -- but a new way of approaching stewardship and financial development in the life of our church. And thanks to the appointment of a new senior financial officer that program is moving along very well and we look forward to good things during the year.

Highlights, certainly, during 2005, have included the Sacred Circle meeting in Pinawa, Manitoba, a gathering for native representatives from across Canada and the very happy outcome of that meeting is a proposal that there be a national Indigenous bishop appointed for the Anglican Church of Canada sometime within the next year. The Anglican Council of Indigenous People is very hard at work in trying to determine exactly what that means, what sort of person they're looking for, and what the duties of that person will be. I congratulate the council on its enthusiasm and on its very careful attention to this important initiative.

The other very important development in terms of Indigenous ministry of course is the government of Canada's announcement that there will be a common experience payment by the government, to all former students of residential schools.

During the year as well, there was an Afro Anglican gathering here in Toronto, it's an international conference, the third of its kind, bringing Afro Anglicans from around the world to meet here in Toronto. And I'm very happy to say that there was a full representation from the continent of Africa and some very affirmative statements that came from that conference.

Also during the year of course were some very difficult meetings, one of them being the meeting of the primates in Dromantine, Ireland where the primates called upon our church and the American church to withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council. We did in fact, send our members to the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham and asked them not to participate in the proceedings but to be there as observers. We also made a full presentation to the Council on the ongoing dialogue here in Canada on the issue of blessing same gender relationships. Canada as you know is still on hold with this item. And in 2007 at our General Synod it should come to a resolution of that question.

Throughout the year the work of your church nationally has gone on very effectively, despite some of the difficulties that we have encountered. One of the highlights of the year was our participation in an international conference in Washington DC on global poverty, calling upon the nations of the world to eliminate extreme poverty and to fulfill the millennium development goals adopted by the United Nations. At the end of that conference we traveled to New York and and in New York presented a communiqué from the conference to the deputy secretary general of the United Nations and to the president of the General Assembly. There has been some very effective follow-up as a result of that conference, as people have gone back to their countries (the heads of state who attended that session) and have incorporated the pleas of that communiqué in addressing their own governments.

We also participated in an initiative with KAIROS and with the Roman Catholic peace and development agency, to initiate a program urging our own government and governments around the world to give highest priority to making available  clean fresh drinking water to all humanity. And to pull back on the issue of making water a consumer product. It's a bit of a scandal that here in Canada, a litre of bottled water is in fact more expensive than a litre of gasoline. In other parts of the world this is an extreme hardship, where fresh water is not naturally available and so we undertake a serious initiative to put pressure on governments on that score.

We attended the conference on climate change in Montreal. And there took part in a major liturgy at St. Joseph's oratory, and our representatives from the Ecojustice department attended much of the session in Montreal. This must be a very high priority and Canada must fulfill its commitments.

Finally what we have done is fulfill our commitments on the settlement fund. Now that the government has made a new announcement along these lines we will of course be in new negotiations which will come to an end about the end of January and that will affect the nature of our agreement. In the meantime, it's business as usual, and I'm very grateful to you and to every dioceses in the country for having fulfilled its commitment to date, $16 million of that $25 million has all ready been received in the fund and nearly $7 million distributed to legitimate claimants.

And finally I wanted to say that despite all the challenges of the year 2005 within the leadership of your church, that is the House of Bishops and the Council of General Synod there is a new spirit of cooperation, collaboration and understanding among us. I am so grateful for that, to all the members of both of those bodies, and I hope that goodwill will not only be sustained but will flow out to the church, throughout the country.

We come of course to Christmas. And I know that you will be gathering in your churches, in very small communities and in great cathedrals and metropolitan centres, to celebrate this wonderful gift of God to all humanity. My prayer for you from Conception Bay to Quamichan to Split Lake and everywhere in between, is that God give you the gift of peace in your heart, in your home and family, in your household, and in the household of God. May you know the joy and wonder of this season, and may we move into the next year in faithful witness to that wonder of God's great gift in Jesus Christ. To all of you, merry Christmas and God bless you.