Archbishop Robert Rivas

Bishop Gabriel Malzaire

The editorial of the June/July issue of St Lucia’s Catholic Chronicle, while confessing surprise at the appointment of Archbishop Robert Rivas as Coadjutor Archbishop, sees the appointment as expressing the “prophetic legacy of the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian denominations in the Caribbean, of demonstrating to the political leadership the real possibility of Caribbean unity.”

As the editorial outlines, “As a Trinidadian he was appointed first to St Vincent and the Grenadines and now he is appointed to St Lucia. Our own Bishop Gabriel Malzaire is heading the diocese of Roseau, Dominica, while Archbishop Kelvin Felix, a Dominican national was our archbishop for 26 years.

Bishop Donald Reece, a Jamaican is Bishop of St John’s-Basseterre, in Antigua and St Kitts, while Bishop Francis Alleyne OSB, a Trinidadian, is head of the Church in Georgetown, Guyana. What Caribbean people dream of and politicians speak about, the Roman Catholic Church is practising!”

As the editorial bade Archbishop Robert Rivas welcome, it promised him prayer and support in facing the many challenges his new appointment will bring – “He will be moving to an archdiocese with a Catholic population ten times the size of his previous diocese and a Catholic ethos vastly different from the predominantly Protestant St Vincent and the Grenadines experience.

He will be facing a socio-cultural context of Kwéyòl language and heritage foreign to him, as well as an unstable political situation….as Coadjutor Archbishop, he will be Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Kingstown, pending the appointment of a bishop there, as well as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Bridgetown, Barbados, pending the appointment of a bishop there, likewise. His hands will be full.”