As he ral­lied parish­ioners and the pub­lic to learn from the ob­ser­vance of Cor­pus Christi to serve oth­ers, Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Charles Ja­son Gor­don al­so urged new­ly-ap­point­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to work close­ly with his part­ners in and out of the TTPS.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter a ser­vice and pro­ces­sion through down­town Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Gor­don al­so of­fered his best wish­es to Gue­var­ro.

Gue­var­ro has 27 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in law en­force­ment and spent most of his po­lice ca­reer as­signed to the Spe­cial Branch.

He was ap­proved unan­i­mous­ly dur­ing a sit­ting of Par­lia­ment’s Low­er House last Fri­day and of­fi­cial­ly as­sumed of­fice dur­ing a hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, on Tues­day.

Gor­don not­ed that like any oth­er leader as­sum­ing high of­fice for the first time, it was im­por­tant that Gue­var­ro took the time to lis­ten to oth­ers around him.

He al­so said that Gue­var­ro should al­so be care­ful in his judge­ment, but was op­ti­mistic that the pub­lic was will­ing to work with him.

“Any­time you take a new of­fice, you have to lis­ten, but you al­so have to be very wise, pru­dent and dis­cern­ing to know which ac­tions will lead us to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try.

“The is­sues are mul­ti-faceted and they are deep, but I am sure if we come to­geth­er and if you lead us as the Com­mis­sion­er (of Po­lice) we will step up and come to­geth­er to make this coun­try a safe place.”

Re­flect­ing on the mes­sage of Cor­pus Christi to see oth­ers as the man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus’ body and blood, Gor­don said it was im­por­tant that every­one treat their neigh­bour with re­spect.

Gor­don, there­fore, urged the pub­lic to come to­geth­er in the af­ter­math of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and work to­wards build­ing a stronger na­tion.

The same rev­er­ence we have for the eu­charist we must have for one an­oth­er and we must learn to re­spect one an­oth­er with pro­found re­spect and see the face of Christ in each per­son we meet.

“What­ev­er has hap­pened ear­li­er this year, I in­vite every­one, let us re­mem­ber we are broth­ers and sis­ters.

“We on­ly have one na­tion and that na­tion, we must all now work hard to build up and we can on­ly do that to­geth­er.”

Dur­ing the ser­vice, Gor­don ref­er­enced the mir­a­cle of Je­sus Christ feed­ing thou­sands of fol­low­ers with on­ly a few loaves of bread and a few fish, not­ing that faith was nec­es­sary to over­come seem­ing­ly in­sur­mount­able chal­lenges.

As the ser­vice end­ed, Gor­don, flanked by parish­ioners, cler­gy, scouts, mem­bers of the cadet force and stu­dents from pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, be­gan their pro­ces­sion along In­de­pen­dence Square be­fore turn­ing on­to Park Street and Pica­dil­ly Streets, even­tu­al­ly re­turn­ing to the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion’s carpark again.