Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

As ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela con­tin­ue to cause anx­i­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Caribbean, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don yes­ter­day called on peo­ple to ac­cept the gift of peace and let it guide every as­pect of their lives.

Gor­don, pres­i­dent of the An­tilles Epis­co­pal Con­fer­ence (AEC), re­mind­ed his con­gre­ga­tion dur­ing his New Year’s Day homi­ly at Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help Church in San Fer­nan­do of the AEC’s call for Jan­u­ary 1 to be ob­served as a Caribbean Day of Prayer for Peace amid ris­ing ten­sions in the Caribbean Sea.

The AEC ex­pressed deep con­cern that the Caribbean, home to fish­er­folk, sea­far­ers, coastal fam­i­lies and mi­grants, has be­come a the­atre for con­fronta­tion.

Re­cent lethal mar­itime in­ci­dents, the block­ade of oil tankers, and in­creased sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ty height­en risks to in­no­cent lives and ex­ac­er­bate hu­man­i­tar­i­an suf­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Venezuela.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said these ac­tions al­so strain mar­itime com­merce, tourism and liveli­hoods.

In its state­ment, Gor­don urged all gov­ern­ments in­volved—in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Venezuela, Cari­com na­tions and oth­er hemi­spher­ic part­ners—to “choose di­a­logue over force, diplo­ma­cy over in­tim­i­da­tion, and co­op­er­a­tion over uni­lat­er­al ac­tion.”

He al­so sup­port­ed calls for Cari­com to meet ur­gent­ly to ad­dress the se­ries of di­vi­sive geopo­lit­i­cal dis­putes strain­ing re­gion­al uni­ty, and im­plored Caribbean lead­ers to speak with one voice on be­half of their peo­ples rather than pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing one an­oth­er.

Dur­ing his homi­ly, Gor­don en­cour­aged wor­ship­pers to em­brace the peace of­fered by Je­sus Christ in their hearts, homes, work­places and com­mu­ni­ties.

“Je­sus Christ is giv­ing you his gift of peace. A peace that the world can­not give you. His gift of peace does not mean that every­thing will go the way we want, but it means that how­ev­er it goes, Je­sus Christ is with us. Do not be afraid, be­cause he is with us,” he said.