The Most Rev. Drexel Wellington Gomez, who worked to preserve unity in the Anglican Communion while he served as Archbishop and Primate of the West Indies, died October 14 at 88.
Gomez was born in the Berry Islands of the Bahamas in 1937. He earned a degree in theological studies from Codrington College, and was ordained a deacon in 1959. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1961. He served as diocesan secretary in the Bahamas before becoming Bishop of Barbados in 1972. In 1996 he became Bishop of the Diocese of the Bahamas & The Turks and Caicos Islands. Two years later, he became archbishop and remained in that role until 2008.
He represented Caribbean Anglicans at four Lambeth Conferences and chaired both the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Covenant Design Group, which produced the Anglican Covenant. In 2003 he was appointed to the Lambeth Commission on Communion and contributed to the Windsor Report.
Gomez affirmed the church’s historic doctrine of marriage and sought to preserve that doctrine through enhancing the leadership of the Anglican Communion’s Primates’ Meeting. He joined his fellow primate Maurice W. Sinclair of the Southern Cone in editing To Mend the Net: Anglican Faith and Order for Renewed Mission (The Ekklesia Society, 2003), which laid out proposals for responding to changes in teaching and practice in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada that were partly taken up by the Windsor Process.
He saw the Communion’s debates about sexuality as part of a larger picture of decline: “So many of our precious core values, strengths of resilient survival and creative resistance, prudent emulation, compassionate concern, solidarity with the poor, mutual upliftment, personal decency, visions of better tomorrows, courageous sacrifices, and courage for wisdom. All of these seem to be diminishing.”
Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados called Gomez a “soft-spoken gentleman” and added: “[He] was a special person—from his voice, which you could easily identify in any audience, to his ever-pleasant personality and smiling face. … Even as a Bahamian priest who had been transplanted to Barbados to lead a church that was beginning to exert its [Barbadian qualities], he was not afraid to stamp his own authority.”
Damian Gomez, former Minister of State for Legal Affairs in the Bahamas, spoke warmly of his father’s leadership.
“Almost 60 percent of the clergy in the region [were] tutored by him when he was the Bishop of Barbados, because he also taught at Codrington College, which was the main seminary for most of the Caribbean,” he said in The Nassau Guardian.
“It was his alma mater, and he spent a lot of time making sure that that was a success. In fact, when he left there, he went to the University of Durham and returned as vice principal of Codrington for a number of years.
“His contribution to parochial worship is possibly the most significant contribution in his legacy.”
The archbishop is survived by his wife, Carol, three sons, a daughter, and 11 grandchildren.
Douglas LeBlanc is an Associate Editor and writes about Christianity and culture. He and his wife, Monica, attend St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Henrico, Virginia.
