1980 - 2005 - 25th Anniversary Celebration Weekend

Saturday 29 / Sunday 30 October 2005

To all the licensed clergy and readers of the Diocese

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Dear friends:

This year as you know is the 25th anniversary of the General Synod Measure that created the Diocese in Europe as a single diocese of the Church of England unifying the Diocese of Gibraltar and the area administered by the Bishop of Fulham (on behalf of the Bishop of London) in northern and central Europe. 1980 was a date of enormous significance for the way we organize our pastoral life and mission as Anglicans in mainland Europe.

We cannot come together in a great service of thanksgiving as an ordinary English diocese could. Therefore, after consulting the Bishop’s Council, I have designated 29-30 October as the weekend when the Diocese should celebrate together the first 25 years of its unification as the Diocese in Europe. That weekend — which can be celebrated as All Saints’ Sunday — will be an opportunity for outreach and worship. Since coming together even regionally can be difficult and very costly, and often leaves many people out, the important thing is that we celebrate our shared life and mission in Christ over the same weekend if not in the same place.

Depending on the enthusiasm of chaplaincy or congregational councils and committees, the weekend may be organized to include a party or reception to which a wide range of guests (official and personal, especially ecumenical representatives and friends) could be invited, and the history and outreach of the chaplaincy and of the Church of England may be attractively set out.

But above all I ask all chaplaincies and congregations — all of you — to join with me and with each other in a great net of prayer and praise to almighty God for his goodness and faithfulness to us all, both before and since that significant moment 25 years ago. The form of the liturgical celebration I leave to the licensed priests of the Diocese to decide: it may be an ecumenical Celebration of the Word of God on the Saturday, or the main eucharist on All Saints’ Sunday itself.

The rest of this document provides material for that celebration, which should replace ordinary Church of England provision for the day. Having reached a certain milestone in our history, the scriptural theme of the provision is the ‘Pilgrim people of God’, which picks up the Bishop’s encouragement to the chaplaincies and congregations of the Diocese to make a pilgrimage during this year to a local spiritual centre or holy place.

This theme, closely allied with All Saints’ Day, gives us the opportunity not only to celebrate our unity in a shared journey of faith, following Christ wherever he leads, but also to reflect upon the mission of the Church — and our diocese no less than any other — to evangelize the world by acts of faith and hope and love, and by the testimony of our preaching and witness.

Our diocesan cathedral in Gibraltar will lead the way, holding its celebration the previous weekend, 23 October, during the meeting of the Bishop’s Council there.

This is not only our silver jubilee. We share it with the Lusitanian (Portuguese) Church and the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church, who were admitted as member churches of the Anglican Communion in the same year, 1980. Let us give thanks for our shared witness with them in the Iberian Peninsula, and pray for their Bishops, Fernando and Carlos, and all their clergy and people.

Naturally, Bishop David and I would very much want to celebrate this festival with all of you, priests and people, in a great shared event: but it is truly impossible. We shall however be united with you, in prayer and thanksgiving that God has given us, with you, a share in the life and witness of one of the most challenging diocesan families in the world Church. May Christ our Lord, who ever gives himself anew in the eucharistic mystery, teach us how to love and serve his mission in the Church today.

+ GEOFFREY GIBRALTAR

Bishop’s Lodge, Worth 12 July 2005