The Rev. Fereimi Cama, vicar of St. Peter’s in Lautoka on the Fijian island of Viti Levu, has been elected Bishop of Polynesia.
When he is consecrated and installed, he will also become one of the three archbishops and primates of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. The election was announced Nov. 11 by the two incumbent primates, Archbishop Don Tamihere and Philip Richardson, who have responsibility for the church’s Maori and Pakeha Tikangas, or cultural streams.
The 63-year-old archbishop-elect is a former dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Suva.
“The fact that he will be the first Bishop of Polynesia of indigenous Fijian descent is something else worth celebrating,” Abp. Tamihere said, “though I know that Fr. Cama is committed to serving all the nations and people of Polynesia with equal effort and respect.”
“We’ve had a Samoan, in Bishop Bryce, we’ve had a Tongan in Bishop Winston — and people felt that it was now time for a Fijian to lead,” the archbishop-elect said when explaining why people wanted a Fijian to lead the diocese. “My vision is not to introduce anything new but to pressure cook what is already there; to make it tender, attractive, and easy to digest.”
The archbishop-elect says he is passionate about building up relationships in the diocese — and passionate, too, about “seeking a better deal for those at the bottom of the heap,” Anglican Taonga said.
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.
