Controversial archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola steps down with purpose

Endings and beginnings
Mindy Belz
March 13, 2010

It's a strange phenomenon when weather—or anything—slows the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola. But that's what happened when record snowfall in Washington last month forced the cancellation of a long-anticipated celebration, known among Anglicans as a festal eucharist, to commemorate Akinola.

The stout, 66-year-old clergyman, who friends say gets by on three to four hours' sleep a night and keeps a travel schedule to rival any gold-status f­requent flier, will step down March 25 as head of the Anglican church in Nigeria—at 20 million, the largest Anglican communion in the world.

The event that was to include national and international church leaders would have displayed the significance of his six-year tenure, a time when the African primates began to lead rather than follow their Western counterparts. Instead the Nigerian is in a downtown D.C. restaurant—counting the hours until his plane departs ("six"), marveling at the snow ("a wonderful and fierce problem for me"), remembering what lies behind, and straining toward the future. the rest image