Ini Kopuria Remembered
Each year on 6th June, the Melanesian Brotherhood, its Companions and supporters commemorate Ini Kopuria, the founder of the community. Ini Kopuria was a police officer in Solomon Islands who had a vision to establish a religious order to take the Gospel of Jesus to the non-Christian areas of Melanesia in 1925. Today the Melanesian Brotherhood is the largest religious order in the Anglican Communion, with households in Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Australia.
In Exeter Diocese, where there are 30 Companions, a service for Ini will be held on Saturday 8th June at 12:00 at the Church of St James and St Anne in Alfington near Ottery St Mary. Alfington was the parish John Coleridge Patterson was priest until he went to Melanesia and became its first bishop. It is a church well known to Melanesian Brothers and bishops who have visited the UK in recent years and find it a place of very special significance.
All are welcome to attend this service, which will be followed by refreshments and a talk by MMUK’s Executive Officer Katie Drew, on her recent visit to Vanuatu and the time she spent with the Melanesian Brothers stationed there. For more information, contact MMUK by email or phone (01404) 851656.
Collect
Loving God, we bless your Name for the witness of Ini Kopuria, founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood: Open our eyes that we, with these Anglican brothers, may establish peace and hope in service to others; for the sake of Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
