The Ven A. Paul Feheley, the Episcopal Church’s Global Partnerships officer for the Middle East, was awarded the Cross of St. Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby this fall.
Feheley was one of 26 honorees for the Lambeth Awards in 2024, which have been presented annually by the archbishop since 2016 to recognize distinguished service to the church. These non-academic awards are an extension of the archbishop’s privilege to grant academic degrees, which dates back to 1533.
This year, eight different types of awards were presented, many of them named after former Archbishops of Canterbury. They are:
- The Alphege Award for Evangelism, four awards
- The Canterbury Cross for Services to the Church of England, four awards
- The Cross of St. Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion, five awards
- The Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, two awards
- The Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism two awards
- The Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship, three awards
- The Langton Award for Community Service, four awards
- The Thomas Cranmer Award for Worship, two awards.
A ninth award, the Dunstan Award for Prayer and the Religious Life, was not presented this year. The awards themselves are small jewelry pieces, decorated with symbols of the ministries they represent.
Many of the Lambeth Award recipients have recently retired or are marking significant anniversaries in their service to the church. Fourteen of this year’s honorees are members of the Church of England, but six others are Anglicans from various parts of the world, and two of the honorees are members of other churches who have worked closely with Anglicans in areas of common ministry. This year, the customary presentation ceremony at Lambeth Palace was not held.
Feheley received the Cross of St. Augustine “for his outstanding and effective love, knowledge, wisdom, and dedication to communicating the Gospel in the Anglican Church worldwide.” He has served as part of the Global Partnerships team since August 2020, helping to coordinate common ministry with Anglican partners, first in Africa, and since 2021, in the Middle East.
He previously produced and hosted radio and TV programs about faith issues in Canada, was interim editor of The Anglican Journal, and served as principal secretary to three primates of the Anglican Church of Canada. He has also served as a communications coordinator at the 2018 and 2022 Lambeth Conferences, numerous Primates’ Meetings, and the last six meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council.
Archbishop Nicholas Drayson, who retired last year as Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church in South America, received the Alphege Award for Evangelism. In 1997, he completed a translation of the New Testament into Chorote, an Indigenous language spoken primarily in Northwestern Argentina.
During his 14 years as Bishop of the sprawling rural Diocese of Northern Argentina, Drayson moved his residence to Ingeniero Juárez, a remote and mostly Indigenous settlement. He traveled extensively to minister to the 150 Wichi, Toba, and Chorote communities where there is an Anglican presence. He also raised up and was able to consecrate bishops for each of the ethnic groups and worked to ensure that the communities had property titles for their land to protect it from expropriation.
The late Alice Garrick, a lay leader of the Church of Pakistan, received the Cross of Pakistan for her leadership in flood relief and ministry to women. She established the Diocese of Raiwind’s Women’s Desk, and led its work for 35 years until her untimely death last May. In 2004, she founded a rehabilitation program for sex workers that has trained at least 6,500 women to serve as midwives and nursing assistants. She also played a key role in coordinating relief efforts during the devastating floods that submerged nearly a third of her nation from June-October 2022.
Sheran Harper, the first non-British woman to serve as worldwide president of the Mothers’ Union, also received the Cross of St. Augustine. A Guyanese physiotherapist, Harper served as president from 2018 to 2024, and has traveled to over 20 countries as a trainer in parenting and economic empowerment programs. She also addressed the 2022 Lambeth Conference and has served as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative on the World Council of Religions for Peace.
The Rev. Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, S.J., a Nigerian Jesuit priest, received the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, which is named for a 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, who negotiated a peace treaty with Saladin during the Third Crusade.
At the invitation of senior Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders, Orobator coordinated a retreat for politicians from different sides of South Sudan’s civil war in 2019, who had been unable to begin a peace process in the struggle that had claimed 40,000 lives. The retreat, held at the pope’s private residence in Rome, opened conversation between opposing leaders. It culminated in Pope Francis’ kissing the feet of rival leaders Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, a moment widely praised as a landmark in the search for peace in the troubled land.
Orobator also helped to facilitate a 2023 Pilgrimage for Peace in South Sudan undertaken by Pope Francis, Archbishop Welby, and the Rt. Rev. Iain Greenshields, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
Other recipients included the Rev. Canon Professor Mark Chapman, the long-serving vice principal at Ripon College Cuddeson; the Rev. Professor Angela Berlis, a leading figure in Anglican-Old Catholic ecumenical relations; and the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Smith, an Australian liturgical scholar who has focused on lifting up the voices of First Nations People. Numerous leaders in evangelism, social ministry, and cross-Communion partnership were also recognized.
Nominations for the 2025 Lambeth Awards are currently being received, with a deadline of November 30.
