The Episcopal Diocese of Liberia is scheduled to play host next month to the most important visitor it has welcomed to the country in many years. The Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori, 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, will arrive in Liberia on Saturday, January 2, 2010 on a weeklong visit.
Bishop Schori will be the special guest of Bishop Jonathan B.B. Hart and his wife, Mrs. Frances A. Hart.
Rt. Rev. Hart was himself elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Liberia nearly a year ago, on January 19, 2008.
Previously elected the ninth bishop of Nevada, Schori is the first woman elected as primate of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Her election took place at the church’s 75th General Convention, held in Columbus, Ohio in 2006, the same year President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated President of Liberia, the first woman elected to lead an African country.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, is the considered by many the overall leader of the Anglican Communion, but that position has always been occupied by men.
Bishop Schori took office on November 4, 2006, following her investiture as Presiding Bishop at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
An elaborate program has been planned for her visit. On Sunday, January 3, at 10 a.m., she will participate in a solemn high mass at Trinity Cathedral. The following day she will be the guest of honor at a Special Convocation at Cuttington University, which will begin at noon. There, the presiding bishop will most likely receive an honorary degree.
On Tuesday, January 5, prayer time with Episcopalians at St. Andrew Chapel, Trinity Cathedral, will take place, beginning at 10 a.m. Later in the afternoon, she will visit Bromley Mission in Clay Ashland, the Liberian Diocese’s oldest institution for girls.
On the Day of Epiphany, January 6 (celebrated as the day the Baby Jesus was taken to the temple to be dedicated), Bishop Schori, accompanied by Bishop Hart, will attend holy mass at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Camp Johnson road. Later that morning, she will meet with Bishop Hart and his clergy in St. Andrews Chapel, Trinity Cathedral.
In the afternoon, she will visit the Rafiki Children’s Village in Schiefflin, and at six o’clock p.m. will attend Choral Evening Prayer at St. Stephen Episcopal Church at 10th Street, Sinkor.
On Thursday, January 7, the two bishops and their delegations will travel to Grand Cape Mount County, stopping first at St. Andrew Mission, Mbaloma. They will drive onward to Robertsport, where they will participate in Holy Eucharist at St. John Irving Memorial Episcopal Church, which is situated on the campus of the Episcopal High School (EPH). This will be followed by a tour of the EPH campus, including the House of Bethany, where the EPH girls and women have historically lived.
A meeting will take place on Friday, January 8, 2010 of the Diocesan Standing Committee and the Diocesan Council, most likely at Trinity Cathedral, the seat of the Liberian Episcopal bishop.
Schori was born on March 26, 1954 in Pensacola, Florida, to the union of Keith Jefferts and his wife Elaine Ryan, both of Swedish ancestry.
She was raised in the Roman Catholic Church until 1963 when, at the age of eight, her parents brought her into the Episcopal Church, St. Andrew’s in New Providence, New Jersey, with their own move out of Roman Catholicism. Shcori’s mother converted to Eastern Orthodoxy a few years later.
A highly accomplished woman, she attended school in New Jersey, then went on to earn her Bachelor’s in Biology from Stanford University in California in 1974. She later took the Master of Science degree in Oceanography in 1977; and the PhD degree in the same field in 1983 from the University of Oregon.
Remembering her deep Christian roots and not satisfied with mere Science, Dr. Katherine Jefferts matriculated to the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, where in 1994 she earned the Master of Divinity degree. But for her, this was not just another academic distinction. That same year she was ordained priest.
She served as assistant rector of the Church of the Good Samaritan in Corvallis, Oregon, where, being fluent in Spanish, she had special pastoral responsibility for the Hispanic community.
In 2001 she was elected and consecrated bishop of Nevada.
Bishop Hart has called on all Episcopal clergy, parishioners and heads of all Episcopal schools to join him and his wife Frances in welcoming Her Grace, The Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori during her visit to Liberia.
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