In 2003, after the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop within the Anglican Communion, the Province of the Southern Cone severed its relationship with the Episcopal Church. It also broke communion with the Anglican Church of Canada after one of its dioceses in 2002 authorized a rite for blessing same-sex unions. Are you still in broken communion with these two provinces?
Yes. In 2010 when an earthquake struck in Chile, I received many, many phone calls from [the Episcopal Church Center in] New York offering us money. But I said no; not out of arrogance but because we had broken communion with TEC and it would not be right to accept their money.

Did you ask permission of the local Anglican Church of Canada bishop to visit here?
No, because I am coming to another, different Anglican church.

n 2003, the Province of the Southern Cone offered Episcopal oversight to conservative Anglicans who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada but who wanted to realign with another province. Does this make you a primate of the Anglican Church in North America along with its elected primate, Bob Duncan?

No. That is over. We provided temporary supervision. When ACNA was founded in Texas in 2008 the very next day I had breakfast with Bishop John Guernsey and said, “My churches in the States will now be under your supervision. Let me know what I should do to pass them to you.” Others like [Bishops] Frank Lyons of Bolivia and Greg Venables may have taken a bit more time but the Southern Cone decided to pass the [North American] churches to the new ACNA primate.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Global South Churches & Primates • GAFCON 2008 • Instruments of Unity • Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion) • Same-sex blessings • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile • * Theology • Anthropology • Ecclesiology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

Listen to it all, it is the first segment.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile

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Watch it all--my favorite moment is when the miner falls to his knees as soon as he emerges and the whole crowd goes silent as he prays--KSH.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile

The Rev. Fernando Karadima is one of Chile’s most respected and influential priests. Some go so far as to call him a “living saint,” who for half a century trained dozens of priests and helped mold thousands of young Catholics from Santiago’s elite.

Now four men who were once devoted followers have filed a criminal complaint alleging that Father Karadima, now 80, sexually abused them in secret for years.

One man said he had reported the abuse to Father Karadima’s superiors in the archdiocese of Santiago as many as seven years ago, but they took no action. All four men filed formal complaints last year with the archdiocesan tribunal and, receiving no response, spoke publicly for the first time this week.

But the allegations have been largely met not with anger at Father Karadima but with outrage at the accusers by many of his parishioners, a prominent conservative politician and church officials. They say a man so respected over so much time could not possibly have abused his followers, though as the news broke this week, a cardinal here confirmed that the church has been secretly investigating claims of sexual abuse leveled against the priest.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Anglican parish communities in Chile, hit by a serious earthquake — the fifth-largest on record — that devastated the city of Concepción last Saturday, are sheltering together in tents for safety and to share food and water, says their Bishop, the Rt Revd Héctor Zavala.

Bishop Zavala was expected to arrive in Concepción on Wednesday after travelling for at least ten hours across broken roads. On Tuesday, he asked his colleague Ricardo Tucas to send the following report:

“[The Bishop] is now travelling to the devastated region of Con­cepción, which holds three of his urban churches, and was near three other rural congregations in the High Mountains of Bio-Bio. Four days following the massive earth­quake in Chile, many towns are still completely isolated . . .

“Andy Bowman, until recently a USPG Mission Companion in Concepción, said: ‘From the com­munications we have had with people in Santiago in the north, the situation in Concepción seems desperate. Half a million people in Concepción are isolated, without water, electricity, shelter, and food. Shops have been looted and civil unrest appears to be widespread. Seven thousand Chilean troops have been sent to the area to maintain order.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Latest News • Anglican Provinces • Cono Sur [formerly Southern Cone] • * International News & Commentary • South America • Chile

Chile's reconstruction will take "three to four years" as the country recovers from the earthquake that killed some 800 people, its president has said.

"There are rural areas where everything has tumbled to the ground... infrastructure has been destroyed," Michelle Bachelet told Chilean radio.

It would take foreign aid and most of the mandate of President-elect Sebastian Pinera to rebuild, she added.

Three days of national mourning have been declared, to begin on Sunday.

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People of faith have responded to such disasters in two ways. First they, like Darwin, have attempted to try and understand how such a world can be created by a loving God. While some at the fringes of the church have proclaimed the horror caused by earthquakes and hurricanes as the judgement of God, most Christians see something in the view that the creativity inherent in the world also brings with it risk. So the fault lines which cause devastating earthquakes have also been of immense benefit by providing minerals, oil, and good soil for agriculture. In fact, the 19th century evangelical and friend of Darwin, Asa Gray, argued that evolution's waste and suffering were necessary for more complex forms of life to emerge in creation.

However, such insights can sound very trite to the person who has lost a loved one or been made homeless. In addition, they don't provide a full explanation to the extent of suffering, a point which struck Darwin strongly.

It's here that there has been a second response. Seeing in Jesus, both a God who gives genuine freedom to the Universe and a God of compassion in the face of need, churches have been motivated to be at the forefront of help to those affected by earthquakes despite the unanswered questions of suffering.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Haiti • South America • Chile • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theodicy

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth's crust dives under another. It's part of the active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

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The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. and reports of damage continued to come in all day. The force of the earthquake was enough to jolt the 94-year-old mother of the Rev. Oscar Carrasco, a district superintendent in the United Methodist Northern Illinois Conference, from her bed in Curacautín.

Joyce Carrasco, Oscar’s wife, reported that they had heard his mother was OK, but that his sister’s house next door was heavily damaged. Her mother-in-law is keeping the family focused in prayer and she feels the family is blessed to be able to be together and prepare a meal. "Thank goodness for fire wood while Curacautín is isolated. … bridges are out. There is a tense calm," Carrasco said. "Still waiting to hear more news."

A United Methodist volunteer-in-mission group from Wisconsin was thought to be in Chile when the earthquake occurred.

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(ELCA News) Earthquake damage is said to be extensive in Santiago and Concepcion following the Feb. 27 severe earthquake in central Chile, according to Karen Anderson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Global Mission staff in Santiago.
The Feb. 27 earthquake measured 8.8 on the Richter scale. The Chilean government has reported at least 147 deaths in all of the country. A tsunami warning was issued for the entire Pacific basin as a result of the earthquake, including Hawaii and U.S. territories such as Guam and American Samoa.
According to news reports in Chile, the earthquake damaged 1.5 million homes, 500,000 "very seriously," Anderson wrote in an e-mail to the ELCA News Service. Phone service was not available.
"Many homes, especially in older parts of Santiago, were destroyed," she wrote. The international airport there suffered "major damage" and is closed, Anderson wrote.

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A tremor with a magnitude of 8.8 devastated large parts of southern Chile and sent huge waves racing at up to 400 miles an hour across the Pacific. Isolated ocean islands were reported to have suffered severe wave damage, and tsunami warnings were issued across a vast area stretching from Russia and Japan through to the Philippines and New Zealand.

In the Chilean capital, Santiago, some five million woke up to "hell" as the earthquake, which struck in the small hours of Saturday morning, collapsed tower blocks and bridges and swallowed cars as it ripped cracks in the roads. Rescue teams worked throughout the day to dig out people buried alive in the rubble.

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It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America's most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaetón beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls aged 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts.

The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands. About 800 teenagers sway and bounce to lyrics imploring them to "Poncea! Poncea!": to make out with as many people as they can.

And make out they do - with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of being known as the "ponceo," the one who pairs up the most.

Chile, long considered to have among the most traditional social mores in South America, is crashing headlong against that reputation with its precocious teenagers. Chile's youth are living in a period of sexual exploration that, academics and government officials say, is like nothing the country has witnessed before.

"Chile's youth are clearly having sex earlier and testing the borderlines with their sexual conduct," said Dr. Ramiro Molina, director of the University of Chile's Center for Adolescent Reproductive Medicine and Development.

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