The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

MOURNERS, including Prime Minister Perry Christie, attended the funeral service of the Rt Rev Cornell Moss, the Bishop of Guyana, at the Church of the Ascension in Grand Bahama on Friday.

Also attending were Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe, Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell, Minister for Grand Bahama Dr Michael Darville, and Deputy Leader of the Free National Movement, Peter Turnquest.

Bishop Moss, 55, died on Saturday, May 30, in Miami, Florida, where he had been recuperating from heart surgery before suffering a relapse.

The Bahamian Anglican clergyman was well known in Grand Bahama, where he had served as Rector of the Church of the Ascension for many years. 

He was educated at Codrington College, Barbados, and Nashotah House, Wisconsin. He became an ordained deacon on January 5, 1983, and was ordained a priest a year later by Bishop Michael Eldon, the 11th Bishop of Nassau and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Rev Moss was appointed Curate of Christ the King Parish Church, Ridgeland Park, Nassau and Rector of St John the Baptist Parish in Marsh Harbour, Abaco, in September 1986. In March 1992, he was appointed as Rector at the Church of the Ascension, became Archdeacon of the Northern Bahamas in 2000 and was elected Bishop in August 2009.

The Rt Rev Moss was appointed the Bishop of Guyana on December 8, 2009, with some 200 churches under his care.

In 2008, he was diagnosed with type two Diabetes and congestive heart failure. In March 2014, he was hospitalised for hypertension, diabetes, lung infection and a heart condition.  

Retired veteran educator Cecil Thompson has described Bishop Moss as a kind-hearted and disciplined person who possessed a profound love of God. He said that during 1993, Father Moss filled in as a religious knowledge teacher at Hawksbill High due to the difficulty of finding teachers to teach religious studies.