Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu turned 90 with a Eucharist service celebration at Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral. Tutu made a rare public appearance on October 7 at the iconic Cape Town cathedral, the site of prayers and protests during the apartheid era, where he attended a special thanksgiving service.

The 1984 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who won the award for his role against the racist apartheid system and work for healing, arrived in a wheelchair with his wife, Nomalizo Leah Tutu.

Also among the family members at the service were two of the couple’s daughters, the Rev Mpho Andrea Tutu van Furth and Naomi Nontombi Tutu, the Daily Maverick reported.

It was an intimate midday service, with limited attendance due to Covid-19 regulations in South Africa, and began with Happy Birthday sung by the assembly. Tutu was frail and unable to stand up from his wheelchair, but he applauded reverently in the front row, South Africa’s Daily Maverick Newspaper reported.

One of Tutu’s fellow anti-apartheid activists, the Rev Allan Boesak, who was once president of the former World Alliance of Reformed Churches, led the service for his “friend and brother,” saying that the archbishop, despite “seeing it all... has always given us hope.”

(WCC)

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