Episcopalians work around Honduran coup

Posted June 29th, 2009

Central Florida Episcopalian: Around the Episcopal Church
By Joe Thoma

One day after a military coup seized power in Honduras, Honduran Bishop Lloyd Allen e-mailed The Episcopal Church's House of Bishops asking for prayers, while friends and relatives of Episcopalians on mission trips to the Central American country are hoping for a speedy end to the unrest.

 
In his e-mail, Bishop Allen said he wanted to “call on the Church to keep this diocese and the Honduran people highly in prayers,” as “I really don't know what the future will bring.” (Read the Rev. George Conger's entire news story from The Living Church.)
 
On June 28, soldiers occupied the presidential palace in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa and forced President Manuel Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica.
 
Episcopalians in Honduras and in Central Florida contacted on June 29 said that they are going ahead with their planned mission trips. Although travel within Honduras is difficult, the mission teams expect conditions to return to normal soon.
 
 
Deacon Kathleen Pennybacker, the Diocese of Central Florida’s Canon to Honduras, has just returned home to Inverness from Honduras. She said Honduran Bishop Lloyd Allen, his staff and the U.S. mission groups she contacted were carrying on with their work but trying to avoid nonessential travel, especially to Tegucigalpa.
 
“We knew this was coming,” Deacon Pennybacker said. “Everyone was prepared, and it’s pretty quiet right now, but we don’t know how it will all develop.”
 
Central Florida and Honduras have been companion dioceses for 35 years -- the longest such relationship in The Episcopal Church.
 
“I talked with Bishop Allen before I left, and he had cancelled a couple of meetings scheduled for Tegucigalpa, so people wouldn’t have to come into the city,” Deacon Pennybacker said. “Travel is difficult right now. There are always road checks, but there are a lot more of them right now.”
 
A group from All Saints’, Lakeland, is in Honduras and a seven-member group from Holy Child, Ormond Beach, left for Honduras the morning of June 29. The Ormond Beach group will be volunteering at its companion parish, Santa Maria Virgen de las Mercedes, in Rancho del Obispo, about 50 miles east of Tegucigalpa.
 
“They went ahead with the plan,” said Jennifer Lutterbie, Holy Child’s parish secretary. “The diocese and the SAMS team said to come on down, so they did.”
 
SAMS – the South American Missionary Society – serves the Episcopal Church by training and helping to send individual and team missions to locations in the Americas.
 
According to the Washington Post and other news sources, the Honduran National Congress supported Zelaya’s ouster, and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti the new president on Sunday afternoon. The Honduran Supreme Court also supported the removal of Zelaya, saying that the military was acting in defense of democracy.
 
For months, Zelaya had called for a nonbinding referendum seeking support for a revision of the constitution allowing his reelection after his term ends in January 2010. The Honduran Supreme Court called the referendum unconstitutional, and leaders of Zelaya's own party denounced the measure.