Kenyan priest to be next AC affairs adviser
THE Archbishop of Canterbury’s next Adviser for Anglican Communion Affairs is to be a Kenyan priest, the Very Revd Dr Sammy Wainaina, Lambeth Palace announced this week. Dr Wainaina has been Provost of All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi, since 2013, and will take up the post in May. He succeeds the Rt Revd Anthony Poggo, who became the new secretary-general of the Anglican Communion last year (News, 30 September 2022). Dr Wainaina was ordained in 1996 in Nakuru diocese, where he grew up, and has served as vicar, archdeacon, and assistant provost. He is married to Beatrice, and they have three children. He said of his new post: “This is both an opportunity and a challenge that I take with grace and courage.” Archbishop Welby described Dr Wainaina as “a dedicated and faithful priest” and “a creative and evangelistic provost.”
Christian Aid signs up to gender equity
CHRISTIAN AID has signed up to the Fair Share Commitment, which includes a pledge to equal representation of women and men in leadership and trustee positions, by 2030. Fair Share of Women Leaders, founded in 2019, monitors the proportion of women leaders annually, with the aim of holding sectors accountable. It also provides feminist resources for organisational and cultural change. More than 30 international organisations have signed up, including Oxfam International and Amnesty International. The chief executive of Christian Aid, Patrick Watt, said: “In a world where millions of women and girls continue to face systematic discrimination and disadvantage because of their gender, it’s crucial that organisations working for equality and women’s rights model the change for which they’re calling.”
Survey finds religion less important to US
RELIGION is less important to people in the United States than it was 25 years ago, an attitudes survey commissioned by The Wall Street Journal suggests. In the survey of 1019 adults, conducted over two weeks from 1 March, 39 per cent considered religion to be a “very important” American value. This was compared with 48 per cent in 2019, and 62 per cent in 1998. The importance of patriotism had also dropped — from 70 per cent in 1998 to 38 per cent in 2023. Money was the only American value to have increased in the respondents’ estimation: from 31 per cent in 1998 and 41 per cent in 2019 to 43 per cent in 2023.
Pope’s message of hope to orbit the earth
A MESSAGE of peace and hope from Pope Francis is to be launched into space aboard the Spei Satelles — “Guardian of Hope” — satellite, the Vatican reports. The Vatican’s dicastery for communication has formed a partnership with the Italian Space Agency to send a “nanobook” version of Why Are You Afraid? Have you no faith? (images and words from the Pope’s Statio Orbis, 27 March 2020) into orbit around the earth. The nanobook, about the size of the tip of a pen, was created by the Polytechnic University of Turin and can be read by highly-advanced nanotechnology reading devices only. The SpeiSat 3U CubeSat will launch on 10 June, from Vandenberg Space Force Base, in California, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which will place it in Low Earth Orbit at an altitude of 525 km. The satellite could stay in orbit for up to 12 years, but the radio transmitter will continue to broadcast for just six to 12 months, because of limited battery-life. The mission can be followed at speisatelles.org
Notre Dame sued by French language purists
THE Association for the Defence of the French Language is suing Notre-Dame Cathedral, in Paris, for translating its signs into English only, saying that this one translation increases the international dominance of English, AFP reports. The group has already succeeded in pressuring the Eiffel Tower to add Spanish to its information signs, alongside English and French. The association filed a complaint with a Paris court on Monday.