Remembering Bishop Samuel Ruiz
MEDIA ADVISORY: Remembering Bishop Samuel Ruiz
Download PDF For Immediate Release Thursday, February 23, 2012 (Toronto) On January 24, 2011, Mexican Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz died at the age of 86. He had been a bishop for 51 years, including 40 years in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. With his death, the Mexican church lost a great leader. The Indigenous peoples of Chiapas lost an advocate and tireless defender of their rights. The international ecumenical community lost a faithful friend and ally. WHO: Father José Avilés, Vicar for Justice and Peace in the Diocese of San Cristóbal, Mexico Bishop Mark MacDonald, National Indigenous Bishop for the Anglican Church of … [Read more...]
Don Samuel Ruiz at World Peace Forum in Vancouver
From Barry Nelson, Development and Peace BC/Yukon Regional Council Attached please find a picture of Bishop Ruiz attending the workshop on Peace & Justice issues developed by the BC/Yukon Regional Council of Development & Peace and presented at the World Peace Forum in Vanc. Bishop Ruiz was a special guest of the World Peace Forum and surprised us all by attending this workshop. We had a number of people from Mexico making presentations at this workshop including his personal secretary. There were some 85 people who attended this event over a 1 1/2 hour period. Some of the others in this picture included several guests from a Mexican delegation beside and behind Bishop Ruiz. On … [Read more...]
Reflection by Jean Koning
As I re-read this piece almost 30 years later, I believe what Bishop Ruiz said then still rings true for church people today, except we are in the minority and I don't know how many people in the secular world really care. Is this the “wilderness” in which we wander today, as predicted by Bishop Ruiz? - Jean Koning, Peterborough, ON – February 28, 2011. From: LIVING MESSAGE - May 1983 (later “Anglican Magazine” - now archived with The Anglican Church of Canada) Everybody's business - by Jean Koning How do we give up power? “Tell us how to listen to the poor,”, the sister asked Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia as we sat at lunch in the Windsor, Ontario Third World Resource … [Read more...]
Remembering Tatic Samuel – Suzanne Rumsey
“During the day, thousands and thousands of the faithful who had come from throughout the diocese filled the cathedral in honour of the bishop who died on Monday, January 24… In a letter of farewell read at [the mid-day] celebration by one of the leaders of the civil society group Las Abejas (The Bees), made up of the survivors and families of the 45 massacred in Acteal, Chenalhó, in December 1997, they said good-bye to Samuel Ruiz and made the following petition to him: ‘We ask that you not forget us, and that when you speak with our father-mother God you greet God on our behalf. Please tell God that the massacre at Acteal continues in impunity. Tatik (sic) Samuel, brother, father, … [Read more...]
Love Letter to an Old Man – Rev. Emilie Smith
January 27, 2011 Dear Friends, Standing close in beside me the woman cries, her tears pouring down into her purple dress. Once in a while she carries her apron to her face, and wipes it crease by crease. For a second I wonder if it's culturally the right thing to do, but to hell with it, my arm wraps around her, her stained-damp eyes peer into mine, we understand, and we love one another. So we lean together, holding each other, looking out, forlorn, lost, the two of us, the ten thousand of us here gathered – bereft, orphaned, undone. Before us, not ten feet away, he lies, or his body does, in a simple wooden casket, draped with the embroidered cloth of those he loved, those … [Read more...]
Remembering Bishop Samuel Ruiz
Send us your reflections, stories, letters or photos On January 24 Bishop Samuel of Mexico died at the age of 86. He has been described as the diminutive giant of the church in Mexico. He had been Bishop for 51 years and was Bishop of Chiapas for 40. The church has lost a great leader, an inspiration and light to many, many people. The Indigenous peoples of Chiapas have lost an advocate, a tireless defender of their rights and a friend - jTatic or Don as he was fondly known. It has been said that his life was a gospel – stories and examples of how to follow Jesus Christ. His leadership was model for all church leaders. As we mourn his death, we need to remember the lessons … [Read more...]
The Life and Witness of Samuel Ruiz – Jim Hodgson
San Salvador, January 31, 2011 I write as the novena—the nine days of prayer following the death of Bishop Samuel Ruiz—is drawing to a close. The flow of moving tributes to this remarkable leader has become a flood, and this is good: it means people, including his opponents, are thinking about the significance of the life of Don Samuel. And I am writing from San Salvador, where the witness of another exemplary bishop, Oscar Romero, is very much with me. To me, the life of Samuel Ruiz was the Gospel come alive in our times. I was blessed over the years to have been able to meet Don Samuel in groups small and large, and to chat over occasional cafeteria meals and once while doing dishes … [Read more...]
