Anglican Communion News Service

By ENS staff
 

The Rev. Canon Ogé Beauvoir, dean of the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Port-au-Prince, was elected Nov. 25 to be the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti's first bishop suffragan, pending the required consents from a majority of bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees of the Episcopal Church.

 

Beauvoir was elected on the second ballot with 68 lay votes and 25 priest votes, according to an email from the Rev. Kesner Ajax, executive director of the Bishop Tharp Institute in Les Cayes and coordinator of the diocese's partnership program. All 95 of the lay delegates and 48 of 52 priests eligible to vote were present for the convention, Ajax said.

The election took place at a special diocesan convention at Ascension Church in Carrefour, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.

Beauvoir, 55, will assist Bishop Diocesan Jean Zaché Duracin as he serves the people and clergy of the diocese, numerically the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church. The new bishop suffragan will be headquartered in the Greater North Region of Haiti.

Beauvoir, who was born in Gros-Morne, Haiti, earned his university and seminary degrees in Montreal and was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He was received into the Episcopal Church in March 2000 by then-Diocese of New York Bishop Richard Grein. He has been an Episcopal Church-appointed missionary to Haiti since 2004. He also served in that capacity from 1991 to 1996.

The ordination and consecration will be held May 22, 2012.

The other two nominees were:

• The Rev. Noé Bernier, priest-in-charge of St. Esprit Church in Cap-Haitien and archdeacon of the north; and
• the Rev. Joseph Jean Jeannot, priest-in-charge of St. Pierre Church in Mirebalais and archdeacon of the Central Plateau.

Duracin requested the bishop suffragan position, and in late May his request received the canonically required consent (Canon III.11.10(b) (2)) of the majority of bishops with jurisdiction and diocesan standing committees.

Nominees had to "canonically have lived and/or had known links with the Diocese of Haiti over the past 10 years," be at least 35 years old on date of the election, have been ordained at least 10 years and been in charge of "an organized mission or institution of the church," according to the rules established for the election.

The diocese continues to recover from the devastating magnitude-7 earthquake that struck just outside of Port-au-Prince, the country's capital, on Jan. 12, 2010.