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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
Cuban Woman Leads World Churches
 Prensa Latina
| | Reverend Ofelia Ortega is the first Cuban and the first woman ever to be elected president of the World Council of Churches. |
Porto Alegre, Brazil - Reverend Ofelia Ortega is the first Cuban and the first woman ever to be elected president of the World Council of Churches (WCC) for Latin America and the Caribbean, at the 9th Assembly of that organization underway here.
The pastor of the Presbyterian-Reformed Church of Cuba was elected on Wednesday evening, along with seven representatives from other regions of the world, to head the major ecumenical organization, which groups 348 churches of several denominations, including evangelic, protestant and orthodox.
Dr. Ortega was the first woman ordained within Cuban churches. She began teaching at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, in 1985, and has been the executive secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean in the WCC Theological Education program since 1988.
She returned to Cuba to be the rector of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Matanzas (SET) for eight years, and at present is the director of the Institute of Gender Studies.
The other presidents by region are Reverend Doctor Simon Dossou, of the Methodist Protestant Church of Benin (Africa), Reverend Doctor Soritua Nababan, of the Christian Protestant Church of Batak, Indonesia (Asia), and Doctor Mary Tanner, of the Anglican Church of England (Europe). |
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