Mexican church goes it alone

ENS-Mexican Anglicans may once have looked north for leadership, but now “we are looking at each other,” says Archbishop Samuel Espinoza, primate of the Anglican Church of Mexico, a 30,000-member, five-diocese province whose autonomy from the Episcopal Church in the United States became effective in 1995.

Archbishop Espinoza used the hands-on AIDS ministry of the Mexican church as an example of its vitality.

He said that he personally devotes many afternoons each week to visiting people and families living with AIDS, which is increasingly a national crisis because “of the cost of all that health care.”

He said that neither the government nor families can handle the costs. In this context, the Anglican church’s Good Samaritan AIDS Ministry, based in Mexico City, becomes an even more vital outreach of Mexicans to Mexicans.