Living Between Times — The Bishop of Tasmania’s 2012 Synod Address

Posted on June 3, 2012 
Filed under Australia

“Next month there is an anniversary which has special significance for me. Can you imagine which anniversary it might be? No! It’s not my wedding anniversary. It’s the 30th anniversary of the end of the Falkland Islands War.

The end of that war introduced a significant season in the life of Argentina: a change from military dictatorship to democracy.

Let me explain. Argentina suffered a civil war, the so called “Dirty War”, during the rule of a brutal military dictatorship from 1976-83.

The Argentine dictatorship ruled ruthlessly to guard and grow its own ends. We lived in a street that had abandoned and burnt out houses. We were told that the occupants of an abandoned house on the corner of our street had ‘disappeared’ one evening following a raid by military personnel. Behind closed doors Argentine confidants told us of all the year 12 students in a college ‘disappearing’ one night and never being seen or heard of again; of whispered reports of people thrown from military planes.

We often wondered, ‘Would the dictatorship ever end? Would democracy ever come?’…”

On Friday, Bishop John Harrower delivered his Presidential Address to the Synod of the Diocese of Tasmania. Well worth hearing or reading.