Brazil, U.S.- based churches share common mission

Brasil, July 9, 2007

Two wooden chalices -- both newly carved from the same block of cedar -- tell Taxi Heathrow Airport of shared faith and friendship rooted in Brazil and the United States.

Handcrafted by artisan-priest Jesse Ramos of Sao Leopoldo, the new vessels brimmed at Eucharistic celebrations also joy-filled by the longstanding collaboration between the 100,000-member Portuguese-speaking Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil and the U.S.-based Episcopal Church, two of the Anglican Communion's 38 member Provinces.

The new altar ware was commissioned by Brazil's Primate Bishop Mauricio Andrade to mark "the deep connections between our two churches, and our happiness in welcoming Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori for a historic visit" July 6-10 in Brasilia, Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro.

"It is an enormous blessing for me to be sharing in your life at this time," Jefferts Schori told the congregation that filled Porto Alegre's 104-year-old Holy Trinity Cathedral for a Sunday-evening Eucharist July 8. "Our two churches have grown in friendship since the late 1800s…. May we continue to grow into the full stature of Christ… as a sign of Christ's One Body in the world."

Jefferts Schori thanked Andrade for the "privilege of his invitation" to Brazil. The official visit to another Anglican Province is the first in her nine-year term as Presiding Bishop.

Also arriving in Brazil concurrently was an eight-member delegation from the Episcopal Church's Diocese of Indianapolis, which shares a companion-relationship triad with the Diocese of Brasilia and Sudan's Diocese of Bor.

The Presiding Bishop added that she and fellow visitors -- including her husband, Richard Schori, and the Rev. Canon Juan Marquez, the Episcopal Church's partnership officer for Anglican and Global Relations in Latin America and the Caribbean -- would "take your friendship home with us in our hearts" to share more widely.

In a moving exchange at the conclusion of the Sunday liturgy, Andrade presented Jefferts Schori with one of the new chalices and an accompanying paten to bring back to New York as a reminder of the history and new mission opportunities between the two provincial churches.

"Another chalice and paten will remain here in Brazil as a similar reminder," said Andrade, reiterating the significance that both chalices and both patens were created from the same piece of wood, "one tree" -- much as the Brazilian church was planted via U.S. missionary work beginning in 1890 and advancing to become its own autonomous Anglican Province in 1965, growing to add two new dioceses and one new missionary district since 2000.

Primate (or "Bispo Primaz" in Portuguese) since 2006, Andrade also pointed to the shared mission priorities engrained in the ties between the two churches, including pastoral and environmental care consonant with inter-Anglican commitments to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

One emphases is environmental advocacy informed by Amazon-region experts vigilant in the protection of Brazil's unique natural resources: 12 percent of the planet's fresh water and 20 percent of the world's animal species are found in this vast nation of more than 8.5 million square miles and 170 million people -- South America's largest country with 26 states and one federal district -- now working systematically to fight deforestation and climate change.

Source: Canon Robert Williams, Director of Communications, the Episcopal Church

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_87939_ENG_HTM.htm