Church digs up graveyard to build ‘£1m home’ for vicar: Neighbours ‘disgusted’ after watching bones being exhumed to make way for house
- Loughton Baptist Church is building the home for Reverend Wayne Dulson
- Neighbours saw graves pre-dating 1860 dug up to make way for property
- Plans for the home were initially turned down by Epping Forest Council
- They were overturned on appeal to the planning inspectorate
A vicar has outraged neighbours after having bodies exhumed to make way for his new family home next to the church.
Residents, including children, watched as bones from resting places pre-dating 1860 were dug up and transferred to coffins before being taken away.
They say they are disgusted at the Reverend Wayne Dulson and Loughton Baptist Church’s lack of sensitivity over the matter and claim the move is motivated by money.
The locals claim a perfectly good four-bedroom manse not far from the Essex church was sold last year for £630,000 to fund the project and the new one could be worth over £1million when complete.
Underwriter Colin Hart, 50, whose family home backs on to the church, said: ‘I’m disgusted that a supposed man of the cloth should go round digging up bodies from their final place of rest. Local people have entrusted their loved ones to this church and this is how they behave.’
His wife, Julie, 48, added: ‘Whatever happened to rest in peace? We woke up to the sound of a JCB out the back and you could see them loading coffins from the back garden.’
Mother-of-four Simone Cohen, 52, said: ‘What I found most upsetting was that when they transferred the bones into coffins, the children could see everything.’
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First female bishop named as the Reverend Libby Lane
Reverend Libby Lane has been announced as the first female bishop for the Church of England, just a month after a historic change to canon law.
She will become the new Bishop of Stockport, a post that has been vacant since May.
Mrs Lane has been the vicar at St Peter’s Hale and St Elizabeth’s Ashley, in the diocese of Chester, since 2007.
The general synod voted to back plans for female bishops in July and formally adopted legislation on 17 November.
The appointment will end centuries of male leadership of the Church and comes 20 years after women became priests.
Mrs Lane was ordained a deacon in 1993 and a priest in 1994, serving her curacy in Blackburn, Lancashire. Since 2010 she has also held the role of Dean of Women in Ministry for the diocese of Chester.
Speaking at Stockport town hall the new bishop, whose role was approved by the Queen, said it was a “remarkable day for me and an historic day for the Church”.
“This is unexpected and very exciting,” she said.
“I’m honoured and thankful to be called to serve as the next Bishop of Stockport and not a little daunted to be entrusted with such a ministry.”
Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated Mrs Lane and said: “This is an historic appointment and an important step forward for the Church towards greater equality in its senior positions”.
Mrs Lane will be consecrated as the eighth bishop of the town at a ceremony at York Minster on 26 January.
The first women priests were ordained in 1994, but to date women have not been able to take on the Church’s most senior roles.
Legislation to fast track women bishops into the House Of Lords will be introduced to Parliament on Thursday.
But Mrs Lane will not be able to enter the House of Lords, as the post she is taking up is a junior or suffragan appointment within the Diocese of Chester, the BBC’s religious correspondent Caroline Wyatt said.
The first women bishop eligible to take up a seat in the Lords is expected to be announced in the new year.
Mrs Lane, who was schooled in Manchester and then the University at Oxford, before training for ministry at Cranmer Hall in Durham, dismissed suggestions her appointment was just a symbolic gesture by a Church still predominantly run by men.
The bishop and her husband, who is also a priest, were one of the first married couples in the Church of England to be ordained together.
Mrs Lane’s interests include being a school governor, supporting Manchester United and learning to play the saxophone, according to her church’s website.
The general synod, the Church’s law-making body, gave the final seal of approval to the legislation on women bishops after it passed through Parliament in October.
After the change was approved, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that the Church was entering into a “completely new phase of our existence”.
But divisions still remain in the church between Anglicans who feel the change is consistent with their faith and traditionalists who disagree.
One of the first crucial steps towards appointing female bishops came in 1975 when the general synod voted that there was “no fundamental objection” to the ordination of women to the priesthood, but it did not pass a second motion asking for the legal barriers to women’s ordination to be removed.
In 1985, a vote allowed women to become deacons, and in 1992 women were officially permitted to be ordained in the priesthood, but the first women priests were not announced until two years later.
In November 2012, the vote to allow female bishops failed by six votes in the House of Laity. But in July 2013, it voted 152 in favour of the motion, with 45 against, and five abstentions.
Gloucester, Oxford and Newcastle are also among the dioceses where new bishops will also soon be appointed, and interviews for the vacancy as bishop for the Southwell and Nottingham diocese took place at the start of December.
Churches in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already allow women as bishops, but haven’t appointed one yet.
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Pope declines Dalai Lama meeting in Rome
File Under: DISAPPOINTED!
Pope Francis will not meet the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama because of the “delicate situation” with China, the Vatican says.
The Dalai Lama, who is visiting Rome, had requested a meeting.
A Vatican spokesman said that although the Pope held him “in very high regard”, the request had been declined “for obvious reasons”.
Correspondents say the Vatican does not want to jeopardise efforts to improve relations with China.
China describes the Dalai Lama as a separatist and reacts angrily when foreign dignitaries meet him.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after Chinese troops crushed an attempted uprising in Tibet.
He now advocates a “middle way” with China, seeking autonomy but not independence for Tibet. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
“Pope Francis obviously holds the Dalai Lama in very high regard but he will not be meeting any of the Nobel laureates,” a Vatican spokesman said, adding that the pontiff would send a video message to the conference.
The Dalai Lama told Italian media that he had approached the Vatican about a meeting but was told it could create inconveniences.
Analysts say the Vatican and China are at odds over control of the Catholic Church in China, which is believed to number about 12 million people.
The Church is divided into an official community, known as the Patriotic Association, which is answerable to the Communist Party, and an underground Church that swears allegiance only to the Pope in Rome.
A serious bone of contention between China and the Vatican is which side should have the final say in the appointment of bishops.
A Vatican official said the decision not to meet the Dalai Lama was “not taken out of fear but to avoid any suffering by those who have already suffered”.
The last time the Dalai Lama was granted a papal audience was in 2006 when he met former Pope Benedict XVI.
The Dalai Lama is in Rome for a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners. It was initially to be held in South Africa but was relocated to Rome after South Africa refused the Dalai Lama a visa.
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Archdiocese hires criminal defense attorney in Nienstedt investigation
By Jean Hopfensperger
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has hired a prominent criminal defense attorney to continue its investigation into possible sexual misconduct by Archbishop John Nienstedt.
Attorney Peter Wold has been retained to continue the investigation completed by the Greene Espel law firm in July, Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché confirmed Monday.
Wold has met with at least one man — previously unidentified in the media — who filed affidavits in the misconduct investigation earlier this year.
Joel Cycenas, a former archdiocese priest and former friend of Nienstedt’s, acknowledged he met with Wold last week. He had some concerns.
“I met with him [Wold] and they are trying to discredit my own affidavit,” wrote Cycenas in an e-mail. “I don’t get it.”
Cycenas would not provide details about the content of his affidavit or answer further questions.
Interviewed last summer, Nienstedt denied any sexual impropriety with Cycenas.
Wold was retained “to help with some remaining details” in the Nienstedt investigation, said Piché in a written statement. The results of the initial investigation were not made public. Details of the current investigation also were not forthcoming.
“It would be a disservice to those involved to discuss any more of the specifics of the investigation while it is ongoing,” said Piché.
About 10 men have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by Nienstedt while they were seminarians or priests, said Jennifer Haselberger, an archdiocese whistleblower who was interviewed by Greene Espel.
She said the archbishop also was accused of retaliating against those who refused his advances or otherwise questioned his conduct. The allegations appear to stem as far back as the 1980s and 1990s, when Nienstedt was working in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Cycenas, a 47-year-old from the Forest Lake area, was among those interviewed by Greene Espel. Ordained in 2000, he became a parish priest at Holy Spirit Church in St. Paul several years later.
Nienstedt acknowledged last summer that the two were once good friends, and that they met while he was bishop of the New Ulm Diocese.
“We were very good friends at one point,” said Nienstedt. “We met at World Youth Day in Toronto [in 2002]. …
“We went to the State Fair together,” said Nienstedt. “Oftentimes I would stay at his rectory at Holy Spirit when I was coming up [from the New Ulm Diocese] to fly out the next morning.”
The friendship dissolved after Cycenas left the priesthood in 2009, Nienstedt said.
Cycenas now works as an outreach manager for a major Twin Cities nonprofit.
Haselberger said she was surprised the archdiocese has hired another lawyer to investigate the allegations.
“My impression was they [Greene Espel] were very consciously and diligently making efforts to get to the truth of the matter under very difficult circumstances,” she said.
“Why would they investigate again?” Haselberger asked. “I hope it won’t be an attempt to slander the victims, which would be a poor reward for coming forth.”
Haselberger also was concerned about the financial implications for the archdiocese, which is laying off staff and floating the possibility of bankruptcy. “Maybe their insurance is paying for it, who knows?” she said. “I’d like to know, ‘What are they hoping to accomplish?’ ”
Piché did not respond to written questions about the exact nature of Wold’s work, including the difference between Wold’s investigation and the previous one. However, he did note that none of the allegations against Nienstedt involved children or criminal activity with an adult.
Complete Article HERE!