The Association for Episcopal Deacons’ executive board has chosen the Rev. Lorraine Marie Mills-Curran as AED’s new executive director. Deacon Mills-Curran will succeed the Rev. Susanne Watson Epting, who will conclude her tenure June 1.
Mills-Curran coordinates ministry among Brazilians in the western suburbs of Boston. She earned a law degree from the University of California and a master’s degree from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. She was ordained to the diaconate in 1988.
In March she wrote a Vestry Papers article about reviving a school at St. Andrew’s Church, Framingham, by holding a party for the parish’s neighbors.
“Rio chorus girls opened our party with a samba parade,” she wrote. “Our teens re-enacted Jesus’ hometown, herding farm animals through Nazaré. Workshops about workers’ rights, green cleaning, and immigrant mental health vied for attention with bands, capoeira demos, and soccer clinics. We tested for osteoporosis, cholesterol, and blood pressure.”
She added: “Suddenly, we were all over the Brazilian papers and radio. We discovered that if you act like a friend, people treat you as one. Brazilian community members approached us for help providing Portuguese literacy for their children. Our vestry approved hosting a parent cooperative and we soon registered 123 students in our Núcleo Educacionista. Our halls again rang with the shouts of children.”
The AED will hold its triennial meeting June 13-16 in Williamsburg, Virginia. “Our location in Williamsburg is a wonderful destination site, but it also challenges us to engage our history,” the association says on its website. “The intersection of the Colonial settlers, the Indigenous people, and the African slave brought to the Americas, has had ramifications felt to this day.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
