IRISH PRESENCE AS DANISH CHURCH HISTORY IS MADE

The Bishop of Clogher, Rt Rev Michael Jackson and Most Rev David Chillingworth, Primus of Scotland, witnessed the Church in Denmark signing the Porvoo Agreement, yesterday, October 3.

After close to 500 years of separation, visible communion has been restored between the Anglican Churches of Great Britain and Ireland and the Church of Denmark. On Sunday last, following a Eucharist in Vor Frue Cathedral in Copenhagen, officials of the Danish Church signed the Porvoo Agreement.  All the Lutheran Churches of the Nordic and Baltic countries (except the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia) have now signed this ecumenical statement which brings those Churches into a living relationship of shared life and mission, including the interchangeability of ministers. The Church of Denmark comprises 10 dioceses in Denmark itself and one in Greenland. There are 2,200 parishes served by about 2,400 priests. 

The weekend celebrations began with a service of Evensong on Saturday in St Alban's Anglican Church in Copenhagen. The Bishop, Rt Rev David Hamid, welcomed the international gathering to the service which the Venerable Jonathan LLoyd, Chaplain of St Alban's and Archdeacon of Germany and Northern Europe, led. Bishop Martin Wharton (Newcastle), the Anglican Co-Chairman of the Porvoo Contact Group, read the sermon which was to have been delivered by Bishop Kenneth Stevenson, who was not able to attend due to illness. Bishop Stevenson, the former Bishop of Portsmouth, is himself part Danish, and is a Knight Commander of the Kingdom of Denmark's Order of the Dannebrog.

Bishop Hamid was born in Glasgow, part Scottish, part Burmese. Educated in Canada - McMaster Uni and Trinity College, Toronto. Parish priest in the diocese of Niagara (which he says is the home of the world's largest baptismal font!), he then was the Anglican Church of Canada’s Mission Co-ordinator for Latin America & the Caribbean. From 1996 he served as Director of Ecumenical Affairs & Studies of the Anglican Communion in London. In 2002 he was consecrated bishop. His wife Colleen is a medical researcher at Kings College, London. They have two sons, Jonathan and Michael. 

More at:

http://eurobishop.blogspot.com/2010/10/church-of-denmark-signs-porvoo.html