“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound — I was blind, but now I see.” The melody of this beautiful hymn lingers in my mind as we move toward Sunday, March 25, 2007, and the commemoration of the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act. The courage, determination and the “grace” of William Wilberforce need to be remembered and celebrated with the 200th anniversary of the passage of legislation in the British Parliament which finally prohibited the sale and commerce of human beings as slaves.

I look forward to seeing the movie “Amazing Grace” that dramatically retells the story.

I believe that the grace of God has been at work over these 200 years to cure our blindness, to help us see the evil of slavery and its lasting effects in our churches and in our society. Observing the bicentenary will help us to accept our moral obligation to recognise and to promote the dignity of every human person and to condemn racism in all its forms.

But we are not just commemorating a past event. We must also move forward and eliminate the new and numerous forms of slavery that have developed in our own day, be it the traffic of women and children in the sex trade or the subtle forms of “wage-slavery” that exist for the poorest of labourers in many parts of the world.

William Wilberforce was a member of the Anglican Church who put his faith into practice, to do good and eliminate evil by strenuously promoting the Slave Trade Act in the British Parliament. It is most fitting that a religious service of prayer and thanksgiving to commemorate this event will take place in the Anglican Cathedral on Sunday, March 25, at 5 p.m.

All the members of the Catholic Churches in Bermuda will be invited by their Pastors to attend this special service. Rev. Jerome Kroetsch, C.R., the Vicar General of the Diocese of Hamilton in Bermuda, will officially represent the Catholic Church.

It is my hope and prayer that he will be joined by a large number of members from all the Catholic parishes on the Island.

Bishop Robert J. Kurtz, C.R.