CANADA: More native priests needed, says Anglican Indigenous Network
By Anne Fletcher
May 24, 2007

[Anglican Journal] The Anglican Indigenous Network has put itself on a new and firm bureaucratic footing in order to push forward on its number one concern -- the faster ordination of more native priests.

At its biennial meeting, held May 17-22 in Vancouver, Canada, 25 delegates from five regions around the Pacific chose a five-member executive to back up the long-time secretary general, Malcolm Naea Chun of Hawaii.

Representatives from Canada, the United States, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia and the Torres Straits Islands also promised to fund an annual budget, starting at $20,000, the first such budget for the organization begun in 1991.

The question of native ordination dominated the meeting. But the single most worrying situation in the network's territory -- Hawaii, where the Episcopal diocese has only one indigenous priest -- was handled with an open-ended motion. It authorized the three native bishops at the meeting -- Mark MacDonald of the Canadian church and John Gray and William Brown Turei of New Zealand -- to follow any route at all to train leaders for and to give pastoral care to indigenous people. the rest