Billy Graham association sells summer camp for $5 million
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The Peter J. Fontaine Foundation purchased the camp and about 300 acres of land just east of Asheville in December, according to a Jan. 3 announcement. The foundation wants to reopen the area this summer under the name Camp Cedar Cliff, maintaining focus on evangelism and traditional summer camp activities.
``My kids had gone to Cove Camp. It was an important part of their lives,'' said Peter Fontaine, the foundation's president. ``We decided to pick up that torch and continue that particular mission field.''
About 2,000 kids usually attended Cove Camp during four months in the summer. The Graham association stopped offering the summer camp last year but still used the site for retreats, former Cove Camp director Hugh Wright said.
The Graham association will finance part of the sale with a $3 million loan to Fontaine's nonprofit that must be repaid next year, according to the deed for the site.
Fontaine, an entrepreneur from Florida who lives with his wife and four children in Asheville, said he became interested in the summer camp business when he heard Cove Camp had closed.
Episcopal bishop leaves Alaska for indigenous ministry in Canada
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP)- The Episcopal bishop for Alaska has been named the Anglican Church of Canada's first national indigenous bishop.
The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, 52, will oversee aboriginal parishioners in Canada starting March 1.
The new position is not the norm in Anglican tradition _ appointing a bishop who is pastor to a group of people no matter where they live, rather than in a specific geographic area. At a 2005 national gathering in Pinawa, Manitoba, indigenous Anglicans requested a national indigenous bishop.
``It is a different way of organizing what is already there,'' MacDonald wrote in a letter to Alaska Episcopal churches. ``It takes more seriously aboriginal culture, authority and identity and tries to give expression to that.''
There are 220 Native Anglican congregations in Canada, he said.
``We are not interested in simply reproducing in Native communities the Anglican Church as it exists in the southern part of Canada,'' he said. ``We want one that really allows Native people patterns of being, organizing and governing.''
The appointment was announced January 6 by Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the leader, or primate, of the Anglican Church of Canada.
MacDonald claims native ancestry on both sides of his family but is not enrolled in a tribe. He is an assisting bishop of Navajoland Area Mission for the U.S. Episcopal Church, a position he will maintain. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. wing of the global Anglican Communion.
Pope Benedict XVI baptizes 13 newborns in the Sistine Chapel
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI baptized 13 newborns in the Sistine Chapel, continuing a tradition of Pope John Paul II.
Wails rang out in the frescoed chapel as the pontiff addressed the small gathering of parents, children, godparents and other relatives gathered there, but the babies went quiet when Benedict poured holy water over their heads to administer the sacrament.
``The birth of these babies has given a special meaning to Christmas in your family,'' the pope said Jan. 7. After the baptism, the babies all were given white gowns to signify their new state of purity and their entrance into the Roman Catholic Church.
``Wear them without stains for eternal life,'' Benedict said.
John Paul, who died April 2005, always seemed to enjoy the baptism Mass, often joking when the children's cries muffled his own words.
The baptism marks the day that celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the end of the Christmas season.
Benedict referred to the baptism in the Sistine Chapel in comments after the Mass to tourists and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square under a drizzle. He invited them ``to pray for these new Christians, their parents and their godfathers and godmothers.''
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