The Rev. Canon Betsee Parker lives a rich life. The description applies not only to her means but also to the wealth of experiences she has drawn from a range of advocacies. In 2025, she will travel to at least half a dozen countries, including the Middle East and parts of Africa, where she has championed sustainable development practices for over a decade alongside Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development.
On October 7, 2023, after learning about the massacre in southern Israel and witnessing the war that followed in Gaza, one of the Episcopal Church’s first female ordinands found herself in prayer and in distress. She recognizes the painful complexity of the issue for many of her friends—Israelis and Palestinians alike.
“I knew the perspectives of both sides,” she said. While in prayer, she had a nagging desire to help those who were being attacked and had no capacity to help themselves. She took action, not wanting to simply assist “down the road.”
As the war raged in late 2023, she spoke to Archbishop Hosam Elias Naoum of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, offering “to help you out and try to help keep the al-Ahli Hospital open, so that we can treat anybody, I don’t know, whoever needs it.”
The al-Ahli Arab Hospital is the only Christian hospital in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory along the Mediterranean Sea and home to 2 million people. It is also the last remaining functional hospital in northern Gaza.
The 80-bed facility is owned and operated by the Diocese of Jerusalem, a part of one of the 42 provinces of the Anglican Communion. As the war between Israel and Hamas nears its 600th day, the hospital has been repeatedly attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces, which says the terrorist group Hamas, responsible for the October 7 attacks, has a command center in the facility.
It was most recently targeted on Palm Sunday, when two missiles struck the hospital, demolishing a laboratory and pharmacy.
TLC did not ask Parker for specifics about her financial support. But she seemed to have taken upon herself the burden of ensuring “to keep it open so that we can help some people,” no matter what.
“I think it’s doubtful I’ll ever meet anyone that I helped during this time, but that’s not important,” Parker said. “The important thing is to follow Christ and to act when Christ asks you to act.” She added, “I did that … and felt that I was answering a definite call.”
But her support did not go unnoticed.
On May 5, during an Evensong service with a capacity crowd, Naoum was at Trinity Church in Upperville, Virginia, to read his mandate naming Parker an honorary canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. Later, in a Facebook post, Naoum said that the Diocese of Jerusalem honored Parker in gratitude for her humanitarian work and support of the hospital. “Canon Betsee also helped in establishing the Women Ministry Fund for the Diocese of Jerusalem,” Naoum added.
Bishop Mark Stevenson and Assistant Bishop Gayle Harris of Virginia, and the Very Rev. Jonathan Adams, rector of Holy Trinity, were all present at the service. Parker has worked with Adams for four years as an honorary associate priest.
“I felt very much like the Holy Spirit was encircling me,” Parker said of the service. “There was a strong feeling of spirituality and love, and I believe that the whole parish had that same experience.”
On Being Still and Parker’s Toughest Duty
“I’ve always felt a pull for the poorest people in the world,” Parker told TLC, while in New York City. “I was blessed in life by marrying a man who was very well-to-do … a philanthropist himself, and he taught me a lot about it.”
Irwin Uran, of Jewish heritage, became wealthy through stock market investments. According to a biography at the University of Virginia, where his archives reside, Uran witnessed the Holocaust firsthand as an American soldier, assisting in the release of those imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp. He also donated $2 million to construct a synagogue in Leesburg, Virginia, to combat antisemitism in Loudoun County.
Uran and Parker met at the Upperville Horse Show. “We got talking and one thing led to another, and eventually we got married,” Parker recalled. It was 1998, and she had been in ministry for 10 years. She would serve as a parish priest for 17 years, working in multiple congregations and alongside notable leaders like Bishop Barbara Harris, the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion.
She remembers the threats against Harris’s life and described the time leading up to her consecration as a “really tough environment.” But on February 11, 1989, while stuck in a “large crowd of male priests,” she was deeply moved to witness many of them crying, as she did, as Harris became bishop before 8,000 people at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center.
“My faith is the core, the heart, and the depth of everything I do,” Parker said. “I have always felt very close to Jesus Christ and to God, even as a child.” She has always believed that, even in the most challenging moments, as long as she remained steady and in communication with the Lord, “I would come through these troubles.”
The toughest moment came on September 11, 2001. She and Uran were in their Upper East Side apartment when the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower. As part of New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, she boarded the 4 train and headed to the site minutes later.
“I think it was the toughest, roughest detail I’ve ever done,” she said. “My colleague and I were both Episcopal priests. I was from Virginia, and he was from Philadelphia. We headed up a team of 77 Episcopal priests who volunteered to go down into Ground Zero and help recover and bless body parts.”
“We were at the heart and core of the worst part of 9/11,” she said, adding that to this day, she will not document or speak about some of what she saw.
Uran died in 2007, a few years after Parker retired. Parker soon met Sachs during one of his lectures at Columbia University, who then brought her onto his team, which the United Nations then engaged. Today, she spends much of her time working with the multilateral organization in a senior diplomatic role, focusing on sustainable development and climate change. “I’d never imagined that would happen,” she said. “But I found that my training as a priest really equipped me well for the work.”
Parker wears her clericals wherever she goes. She wants people to see clergy working internationally to help humanity. “I think it speaks well for the church to see that clergy are out there, not only within the four walls of the parish, but in the international community at the highest level.”
In 2016, Parker was named the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Honoree by her fellow alumni at Harvard Divinity School for her commitment to alleviating suffering and improving lives. The school borrowed a line from her speech to title the announcement: “My Parish is the World.”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
