The Tribune

By CLAYTON N CURTIS

OVERCOMING her doubts concerning women in the priesthood, Jassica Castillo-Burley of Nottingham, England, answered a call from God and travelled to the Bahamas to learn from an ordained female priest.

Mrs Castillo-Burley, who has spent the month of July in Grand Bahama, is currently completing her first year as an ordinand at Ridley Hall, Cambridge University.

She was born in Nottingham to Jamaican parents who had migrated to the United Kingdom. She obtained a degree in Applied Chemistry and spent 11 years in the pharmaceutical industry. She has been married to Roy Burley for nearly 20 years, and after resigning themselves to the fact that they were not going to have biological children, they became proud parents of a seven year-old boy named Elnathan, which means “God is a giver”.

Mrs Castillo-Burley is quick to state that she did not come from a traditional Anglican background. In fact, her spiritual formation is rooted in the Pentecostal denomination, but after she and her husband attended a Bible College in Hampshire, they decided to become more involved in the work of the church: she became a licenced worship leader and her husband took a full-time posting with the Church of England.

Feeling satisfied that she was now active in church, Mrs Castillo-Burley continued in her role as a worship leader, but then she said she heard the call of God on her life and decided to pursue holy orders and test her vocation to the sacred priesthood. She saw this not as a traditional career or employment, but as a deeper spiritual calling.

Even with this strong call, she initially did not support the idea of women being ordained to the priesthood, but still decided to enrol in a theological seminary. There were challenges stemming both from the fact that she was new to the Church of England and also that there were not many female clergy that she could use as a pattern for her ministry.

She even said of her calling that, “If the man whose place I am taking was to stand up, I would gladly step aside.”

To gain experience and additional exposure, she gave some thought to attaching herself to one of the cathedrals in the UK, but decided that this was not exactly the experience she was looking for.

Having acquaintances in Canada, she also looked at that as an option, but figured it would not be that much different from what she would experience staying at home in England.

Frustrated, she consulted with the faculty at Ridley Hall, who encouraged her not to lose heart. She sought guidance through prayer. And again, she said, she heard the voice of God speaking to her and saying: “You are going to the Bahamas.”

Naturally, her husband had some difficulty accepting this idea, as neither of them knew anyone living in this country. But again, there was divine intervention, as a member of the faculty knew of a woman priest in the Bahamas, the Rev Marie Roache-Hepburn, and decided to contact her through social media.

This was the answer that Mrs Castillo-Burley said she had been looking for. And Rev Raoche-Hepburn gladly agreed to assist in hosting the ordinand for the four weeks that she wanted to understudy another female priest.

In the time spent in Grand Bahama, she has been able to check off three boxes on her “to-do” list, said Mrs Castillo-Burley, including visiting a diocese which is part of the global Anglican Communion; observing the worship experience within the context of an “Anglo-Catholic” church, and viewing the ordained ministry from a female perspective.

And her exposure was not just limited to the developed areas of the island, as she also experienced the way worship is conducted in parishes from Sweeting’s Cay to West End. She also participated in one of the outreach ministries of the Church of the Ascension when she assisted with the Meals on Wheels programme which distributes food parcels throughout the Eight Mile Rock community.

But Mrs Castillo-Burley is not just here to observe: she has been sharing her gift of music during worship sessions.

Last Sunday, she assisted at the Parish Church of the Ascension where Father Michael Gittens is the rector. She served as both the gospeller for the sung mass and as a eucharistic assistant for both morning services.

Next week, her husband and son will join her here in the Bahamas before the family returns to the UK.