Today, I join with Anglicans across Barbados and the Caribbean to pay respects to a soft-spoken gentleman with Bahamian roots, who made Barbados his home for 20 years, becoming as steeped in local customs and practices as any born Bajan.
Former Anglican Bishop of the Barbados Diocese and Archbishop of the Province of the West Indies, the Right Reverend Drexel W. Gomez, was a special person — from his voice, which you could easily identify in any audience, to his ever-pleasant personality and smiling face.
He also had the distinction of being the last non-Barbadian head of the local Anglican church, ended a tradition that even predated the formation of the Barbados Anglican Diocese in 1824.
I recall, looking back on my days as a girl at the St. Mary’s Anglican Church and St. Michael’s Cathedral, observing and interacting with a Bishop, whose dignity, warmth and ease of communication drew young and old alike to him.
And while my legal and political career had only just started when his tenure as Anglican Bishop of Barbados was coming to a close in 1992, I further recall as a young adult that his warm smile and soft voice were not to be mistaken for weakness or fear. Even as a Bahamian priest who had been transplanted to Barbados to lead a church that was beginning to exert its Barbadianness, he was not afraid to stamp his own authority.
