Bishop David with Bishop Dominic outside Bishopstow in 2003
Remembering Bishop David Beetge
On Saturday 27th September, we in the diocese of Monmouth were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Bishop David Beetge of our link diocese, the Highveld. Bishop Dominic wrote to Dean David Bannerman:
Dear Dean David,
We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of Bishop David Beetge and the Diocese of Monmouth send heartfelt sympathy to our friends in the Diocese of The Highveld. We have been remembering Bishop David in our prayers today (Sunday) and also praying for Carol and his family and friends.
Bishop David and his wife Carol on a visit to Monmouth in 2007
Bishop David and Carol were with us before the Lambeth Conference and travelled with me to Canterbury. We had become close friends over the past five years and I feel quite bereaved. Bishop David’s death is a great loss to the Diocese as well as the Church of the Province of South Africa and the wider Anglican Communion. His leadership and wisdom, his pastoral warmth and integrity marked him out as a remarkable bishop who will be greatly missed. We thank God for his life and ministry and commend him to the God he loved and served so faithfully.
As your companion diocese, we share your sadness and assure you of our love and prayers at this time.
+ Dominic
Fr Patrick Coleman attended Bishop David's funeral on Friday 3rd October.
He gives some impressions of the occasion:
Close on two thousand souls gathered today with their clergy and bishops to celebrate a requiem Mass with and for their bishop and friend David Beetge. While messages from Archbishop Rowan and from the Anglican Communion Office bore witness to the worldwide impact of +David's ministry, it was clear that people from near and far (as far as the UK and Australia) were able to thank God for his warmth, deep spiritual integrity and most of all for his friendship. The tributes came from those closest to his heart, those who shared his pioneering outreach to those infected and affected by HIV, the youngsters who in their education would share his human and divine vision at Saint Dunstan's College (in whose cricket oval the funeral took place), and from his younger brother Peter who shared the 'our Bert' he was to those closest to him.
Some moving moments from the service included the gradual chorus sung in isiXhosa, where with love, tenderness and immense spiritual strength David's people seemed to be almost physically offering him back to God, whose gift David has been to them. Holy Communion seemed to move quite naturally into an equally reverent communion among those present, as family members were hugged, and the Dean and now Vicar General of the Highveld was embraced by Desmond Tutu as he helped him back onto the dais.
For so many of us, this man had welcomed us into his family, and in turn had become part of ours. There can surely be no better sign of the coming of God's Kingdom.
Revd Patrick Coleman
A tribute from Archbishop Rowan Williams:
The Anglican Church wordlwide has lost an exceptional man - warm, intelligent, utterly dedicated, imaginative; and many of us have lost a deeply valued friend. David gave selflessly of his gifts in the service of the Communion, its internal business and its ecumenical relations, and carried great responsibility with calm, humour and good sense.
We join with Carol and the family and all his colleagues and friends in grieving his untimely death and giving thanks to God for a genuinely apostolic life, courageous and joyful. May he rest in peace.
Remembering Bishop David Beetge in the Diocese of Monmouth
Bishop David visited one of our church schools and held the children spellbound with his story of the lion and the mouse and his tales of life in South Africa
Bishop David visited the nuns at Tymawr Convent and spoke long and movingly of the past difficulties of apartheid and the challenges of poverty and AIDS in today's South Africa
When Bishop David visited Magor school in 2007, the school council presented him wuith the first of 89 filtastraws they had bought for the Highveld. Filtastraws are a simple device designed for people in the third world who do not have access to clean drinking water. Scientific tests show that filtastraws kill most bacteria, providing drinking water which is as good as tap water.
At a service in St Woolos Cathedral on 19th November 2003, Bishop David and Bishop Dominic exchanged gifts before signing the link agreement between their two diocese.