The Worst Nightmare EVER!

The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori has been sentenced to three years in a Nigerian jail for insulting the Primates Council.   ++Schori wrote a novel four years ago, which contained a passage referring to the unnamed sitting primates of the GAFCON primates Council. It sold just seven copies. She admitted the charge of insulting the Primates Council, but said she was unaware she was committing an offence.

Her self-published book, called "Up Your Nose With a Rubber Hose," was hardly well-received; in fact the only copy which is still known to exist sits on the shelf of the Nigerian National Library, freely available to the public.

Shackled in leg irons, and wearing standard-issue prison pajamas, Bishop Schori was quickly found guilty, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the spokeswoman of the three bishop panel telling the court: "She has written a book that slandered the Primates, especially Mr. Duncan and Mr. Akinola, the Archbishop of the Southern Cone  and the bishop of San Joaquin and the entire Global South."

The court initially sentenced her to six years in jail, but reduced the term because of her guilty plea.

Before the trial Bishop Katherine had seemed stunned by what was happening to her, describing it is like a ''bad dream''. But she is just one of a growing number of people being investigated and charged under GAFCON's draconian "lese-majeste" law, as the police and army try to suppress what they fear is a rising tide of anti-conealoneialist sentiment. More than 3,000 websites have now been blocked, and one New Hampshire Bishop was jailed for six years in November for an anti-GAFCONIAN speech he made just a stone's throw from the old Lagos Cathedral last July. Several other people including Fr. Mark Harris and Fr. Jake are now awaiting trial.

As a repentant primate, ++Katherine Jefferts Schori does at least have a good chance of being pardoned by the Moderator, according to the BBC correspondent in Lagos, +Michael Nazir-Ali. The Moderator did the same for a Fort Worth man given a 10-year sentence two years ago for defacing his portrait.

As our own Madpriest was heard to say:  "Phew! That's alright, then."

Check it out -- see "Of Course I Could Be Wrong"    

Lo sentimos, pero este era demasiado bueno para pasar. (Hope that gets it.)