Dear Editor,

The Anglican Church recently lost the services of the Reverend Canon Abner Powell, who died on November 24, 2023.

Canon Powell’s ministry began in 1973 when he, the late Robert Thompson (later bishop of Kingston), and Archbishop of the West Indies Howard Gregory were ordained as deacons.

My encounter with Canon Powell is connected with his ministry as rector of the All Saints’ Cure of Souls. All Saints’ Anglican Church, West Street, was the spiritual home of my paternal grandaunts Athaliah and Ruth Medley as well as aunt Pauline Skinner. He also served as chaplain to my late grandmother Agatha McLean, who spent her final years under his care when she moved from Clarendon to live with her daughter and sibling in the 1990s.

For many years Canon Powell entrusted me the task of preparing the liturgies that marked the significant events of Kingston College, his 36th year of ordination to the diaconate, and 60th birthday in June 2009, for which I penned these words: “…and grant unto Abner who celebrates 60 years of life on this day, health and your divine shalom, and that he may minister to your household as a true servant of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord…”

Canon Powell remained committed to his call as a faithful priest. Indeed, the words of God from the prophet Malachi to Levi is a worthy epithet: “My covenant with Him was a covenant of life and well-being, which I gave him; this called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in integrity and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.”

Canon Powell was an enabler of nurturing spiritual gifts of members of the community of faith and those outside. He was fearless as his work took him among both warring political and gang feuds within the Cure, and he was an educator who sought to empower the poor.

One of his unfulfilled desires was to retire and move to his house in Mandeville.

His commitment to the welfare and well-being of the All Saints’ Cure caused him to remain until he was called to higher service in the paradise of God. May he who walked among the poor and dispossessed, leading the people of God in prayer, worship, and acts of liberation, be given a place in the liturgy of Heaven.

Condolence to his family.

Dudley McLean II

dm15094@gmail.com