ARCHBISHOP John Bathersby of Brisbane recently took to the streets while in England to protest the gap between rich and poor.
He said the Walk of Witness was organised by Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and his wife Jane to refocus attention and pressure on the need to help end extreme poverty.
“The march was to help maintain pressure on international governments to keep their promises on the amount of aid they provide to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”
Archbishop Bathersby, who was in England to be an ecumenical representative at the recent Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, said the march was met at Lambeth Palace by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and was an example of faiths working together for the human family.
“He was passionate about the aims to end poverty and the bishops coming together and marching on the streets along with their ecumenical partners. He was quite moved.”
Archbishop Bathersby said it was important for the wider community to see that religion mattered.
He said Australians in recent weeks had seen thousands of Catholics march the street for their faith during World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney.
Archbishop Bathesby said from the 10,000 who took to the streets in Brisbane, during Days in the Diocese in the lead-up to WYD08, to the hundreds of thousands who walked to Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, young Catholics had shown the country the importance of their faith.
“People will wipe-off religion and say it is unimportant and here you’ve got 10,000 young people saying that religion is important – faith is important – and not only do we do it just as Catholics but we do it as Catholics together with Anglicans and Uniting Church and Lutherans. It’s just something that perhaps we need to do more, we’re too complacent about things.
“Maybe we don’t get sufficiently agitated about the affluence of the world and the enormous poverty.
“We just take that for granted and say how lucky we are in Australia but surely there’s space there to protest about some of the things that are wrong with the world and I do think that was leadership by (Archbishop) Rowan Williams in regard to that terrible gap between rich and poor.”
Archbishop Bathersby said Archbishop Williams was concerned that, despite important progress in some regions, the MDGs would not be met for millions of people for whom the Anglican Church had pastoral care.
He said the timing of the march was significant in that world leaders would meet at the United Nations in New York on September 25 and Archbishop Williams wanted a timetable created for achieving MDGs by 2015.
