WEST CHESTER, USA: Virtue Online, March 17, 2007 – The small Anglican Church in the tiny Cayman Islands (“The Church of England in the Cayman Islands”) has appealed for genuine pastoral care and practical, ecclesial oversight to the Panel, set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury to look into petitions from those in the Anglican family who believe they require justice.

This Church in the British dependency (where the Police are “the Royal Cayman Police” and where the Queen is represented by a Governor) is in three islands best known both as the place of major offshore banking groups and also as a favorite place for the visits of cruise ships (as many as seven a day!).

It is near to Cuba geographically but far away and apart in terms of economics and politics. In its petition, sent on March 15 the Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion Office, the Cayman Church requests that:

(a) the Diocese of Jamaica and the Province of the West Indies cease to claim that the Cayman Islands are within the diocese of Jamaica:

(b) the Church of England, via either the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury, assumes its historic and legal role as caring for the Cayman Islands, in much the same way as the C of E cares for the Falkland Isles and Bermuda.

The desire of a Church in a British colony to be tied to the Mother Church in the homeland is natural; and the Queen is both Head of State in Britain and the colonies and Governor of the Church of England in both England and abroad.


Sauce confiscated en route to the Cayman Islands

AUCKLAND, New Zealand: New Zealand Herald, March 19, 2007 – Blog power: Last week a writer on the House of Travel’s Kiwi Travel blog reported that her brother had his highly sought-after bottle of Watties tomato sauce confiscated on the way back from London to his home in the Cayman Islands. She has since updated that quick as a flash the sauce makers offered to ship a replacement more than 12,000km to the Cayman Islands!