Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Bish­op of the An­gli­can Church in T&T, Claude Berkley, hopes the Gov­ern­ment will keep the com­mit­ment made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to help re­store the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain.

Berkley made the re­marks while de­liv­er­ing an ad­dress at the launch of the pub­li­ca­tion cel­e­brat­ing the 200th an­niver­sary of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral on Sun­day at Hayes Court, Port-of-Spain.

The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion promised $20 mil­lion to­wards restora­tion of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, which was bad­ly dam­aged af­ter a 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in 2018. The An­gli­can Church es­ti­mates the cost of restor­ing the Cathe­dral at be­tween $70 and $75 mil­lion.

Berkley said, “We are hop­ing that the promise of the (pre­vi­ous) gov­ern­ment will flow over to this new Gov­ern­ment and that we can look for­ward to re­ceiv­ing that which was promised and to take the work for­ward. But that must not re­duce our en­thu­si­asm for the restora­tive work to be done and for the do­na­tions and oth­er ef­forts of fundrais­ing that we must pur­sue.”

He al­so said the church had themed this year’s ac­tivites Reimag­in­ing Mis­sion: Chang­ing the Par­a­digm, Strength­en­ing Min­istry and Stew­ard­ship. He said the theme aims to deep­en in­tro­spec­tion, prayer and plan­ning, as well as to firm ac­tion to change the di­rec­tion in which cer­tain things are head­ed.

Berkley al­so re­it­er­at­ed the piv­otal role the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral has played in “strength­en­ing church­es” across the arch­dio­cese.

The HTC 1823-2023 Cel­e­brat­ing 200 Years com­mem­o­ra­tive book en­cap­su­lates his­tor­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al in­for­ma­tion.

For­mer pres­i­dent of T&T, Paula-Mae Weekes, al­so de­liv­ered a pre-record­ed ad­dress at the launch.

“Whether serv­ing as a sa­cred space, land­mark, bea­con, shel­ter or refuge, Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral has been from its gen­e­sis to to­day a sol­id, en­dur­ing and sig­nif­i­cant land­scape of our cap­i­tal city,” she said.

Be­fore be­com­ing pres­i­dent, Weekes was the Chan­cel­lor of the An­gli­can Church in the Dio­cese of T&T and pro­vid­ed le­gal ser­vices on ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal and oth­er mat­ters to three suc­ces­sive Bish­ops of the Dio­cese.

She de­scribed the com­mem­o­ra­tive book as a work of love, re­mem­brance and trib­ute.

The book in­cludes snap­shots of the cathe­dral’s his­to­ry, re­flec­tions by mem­bers of the An­gli­can cler­gy in­clud­ing deans of the cathe­dral, mus­ings of the dif­fer­ent parish­ioners, facts about the ar­chi­tec­ture, mu­si­cal her­itage, and archival pho­tographs.

Weekes said the book is not on­ly valu­able to the An­gli­can faith­ful but to the peo­ple of T&T, as the cathe­dral is a his­tor­i­cal land­mark.