Diana Frade (center) with girls from Our Little Roses Ministries in San Pedro
Sula, Honduras. Frade, who founded the home for abandoned and abused girls, said
donations to the organization have dropped about 12 percent since her husband,
Episcopal Bishop Leo Frade of Southeast Florida, voted to confirm the church’s
first gay bishop in August 2003. (Photo courtesy Diana Frade)
advertisement
advertisement
|
By PHIL LaPADULA
Friday, April 02, 2004
Orphans in Honduras may have become political pawns in a dispute within the Episcopal
Church over the recent appointment of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.
Bishop Leo Frade said this week that a girls mission founded by his wife has “taken
a big financial hit” after some conservative parishioners withdrew their
financial support for the program to retaliate against him for voting to confirm
Gene Robinson, who became the first openly gay Episcopal bishop last August.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction of some individuals,” said Frade,
who was the only one of five Florida bishops to vote for Robinson’s confirmation.
Describing the girls mission as an “interfaith, humanitarian project,” Frade
said he was “surprised and depressed” that some parishioners were
using it to express their disapproval of his vote to confirm Robinson.
Before he was elected bishop of Southeast Florida, Frade served as bishop
of Honduras from 1985 to 2000. His wife, Diana Frade, founded Our Little Roses
Ministries in 1988.
The two-and-a-half acre facility for abandoned and abused girls is located
in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. It includes a bilingual school and a clinic that
also serves the surrounding community. Currently, the home cares for 71 girls
ranging from newborns to those in their late teens.
Contributors can choose to donate money to the ministry’s general fund
or sponsor a child with monthly payments.
Since September 2003, the mission has lost $30,000 in donations, which is
about 12 percent of its revenues, Diana Frade said. Several people called or
sent e-mails specifically saying that they were withdrawing their support because
of Bishop Frade’s vote to confirm Robinson, she said.
“Some of them said they could no longer support a ministry whose chairman
was ‘going against the word of God,’” Diana Frade said.
“One person wrote a letter saying he would continue to pray for the
child but would not send any more money. As if the child could eat the prayers.
It was shocking that someone who was supposedly praying and supporting a child
would then withdraw their support out of retaliation and anger, without really
thinking of the consequences.”
Honduras, like many Latin countries, is a traditional society “and people
are often homophobic,” Diana Frade said. “But I never expected
anything like this to happen in the States.”
Beverley Allison, executive director of Our Little Roses Ministries, has also
received calls from people withdrawing their sponsorships because of the gay
bishop controversy.
“I’ve had several calls, and I’ve tried to talk to them
about what they’re actually doing,” said Allison, who has five
children and 11 grandchildren of her own. “I would never turn my back
on my children, even if they did something that I disapproved of,” she
said.
The mission, which has no endowment, began to feel the effects from the drop
in donations in November.
“We were scrambling for money,” Allison said. “We had a
very, very small reserve, and we had to pull from our reserve in order to meet
monthly expenses.”
The mission has been unable to fill staff positions and has had to cut back
on some athletic and art programs, Allison said.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for a predominately conservative diocese in central
Florida claimed some liberals are also using charity as a political weapon.
“Some of the conservatives in the church and some of the African bishops
have suggested that the Episcopal Church USA has threatened to withhold funding
for mission work to areas under the administration of bishops who opposed Robinson,” said
Joe Toma, communications officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida,
which is known as one of the state’s most conservative dioceses. “There’s
mudslinging on the fringes of both sides,” he said. “But most people
in the middle are continuing to support mission work.”
Toma noted that the Central Florida diocese, whose bishop voted against Robinson,
has supported Our Little Roses Ministries and recently ran a promotion for
the mission in its newspaper. He knows conservative parishioners and at least
one conservative church that have continued to support the girls mission. Bishop
Frade is liked and respected even by many Episcopalians who disagree with him,
Toma said.
“Here in Florida, personal relationships trump politics,” he said.
In fact, the conservatives who withdrew their sponsorships because of the
gay issue all reside in other parts of the country, Diana Frade said.
“It just seems ludicrous to me,” she said. “The girls are
being punished for something that they know nothing about.”
|
