Former Bermuda-based AME Pastor Alfonso Sherald has died aged 60, according to news reports in the United States.

Rev. Sherald was a founding member of the Women's Resource Centre and served the Island's AME churches for 12 years from 1980, when he was described as one of the Island's best-loved pastors.

He moved to Pennsylvania in 1992 to work at a church in a troubled inner-city neighbourhood and for the last six years worked at Morristown, New Jersey.

That area's Daily Record newspaper describes him as an energetic pastor who paid special attention to the community's youth and residents.

It states he died early yesterday morning although the cause of death was not known.

Locally based Rev. Joseph Ford is quoted: "It is a difficult thing. We weren't expecting it since he was relatively young."

Rev. Sherald was a chaplain at a youth guidance centre, substitute teacher at a high school and president of the Morris County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The final days of his spell in Bermuda were spent as pastor at Bright Temple in Warwick, where he ran an after-school programme for about 40 students.

On his departure in March 1992, AME presiding elder of the time Rev. Conway Simmons said Rev. Sherald had stayed in Bermuda longer than usual because he fought to hold onto him.