VOL feels particularly vindicated by this news.

We have exposed Bishop Mwamba and his complicity with Nickie Henderson, a pro-gay London cleric who has been angling for the job of Bishop of Lake Malawi.

VOL has viewed with alarm statements Bishop Mwamba has made about the African Anglican Church. He recently said that Anglican churches will soon return to their mission to alleviate poverty, disease and injustice and abandon a "fixation" with homosexuality.

"Very few of us take the homosexual debate as a top priority issue because there are more pressing issues facing the African church," Mwamba told "Ecumenical News International" in a telephone interview from his office in the Botswana capital, Gaborone. "Most African Anglicans want to get back to basics and concentrate on poverty, disease, injustice and the need for transparency in governments," said the dean of the Central African region, made up of churches in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Mwamba said, however, he thought there would be "forward movement, even a breakthrough, on this issue" when leaders of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) meet in Mauritius from October 2-5. "I believe that quite number of African bishops who have threatened not to attend next year's Lambeth Conference in Canterbury may change their minds. Yes, there are problems, but a week is a long time in politics and we still have almost a year to go before the next Lambeth Conference.", the meeting of global Anglican leaders that takes place every 10 years.

Mwamba's views stand in stark contrast to those of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola who has formally broken communion with the American Episcopal Church. Akinola has said his province will boycott Lambeth next year unless the Episcopal Church complies with the demands of the Windsor Report.

Read the story here: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?
storyid=6575

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Anglican Province of Central Africa - Archbishop's final decisions

ANGLICAN-INFORMATION reports that Archbishop Bernard Malango who is due to retire on Saturday 8th September after his final Provincial Synod has effectively sacked the new Dean of the Province, The Rt Rev'd Trevor Mwamba, Bishop of Botswana.

With the apparent agreement of at least some of the bishops of the Central African Province a Zambian bishop has been appointed Dean in Mwamba's place to oversee the Province in the interim period before new elections for an Archbishop or other reorganisation.

Archbishop Malango, freshly returned from assisting in the consecrations in Kenya of three American bishops for congregations that have split from the American Episcopal Church, has also, in the closing hours of his archiepiscopate, unilaterally cancelled the synodically agreed Provincial Court that was recently proffered as a solution to the long-running dispute over the failure of the Central African Court of Confirmation to endorse the election in 2005 of the Rev'd Nicholas Henderson as Bishop of Lake Malawi.

Archbishop Malango's own diocese will become vacant in the New Year when he finally steps down as bishop of the Diocese of Upper Shire. With two dioceses vacant in the Province, constitutionally no new Archbishop can be elected until they are both filled.

In addition to acting against Bishop Mwamba, Archbishop Malango has openly criticised Bishop James Tengatenga Bishop of South Malawi for disagreeing with him.

Understandably, Bernard Malango's actions have caused consternation in the Diocese of Lake Malawi where many had hoped that an orderly solution to the impasse over the election of their bishop, as agreed under the oversight of Bishop Mwamba, was at last achievable.

END