Coadjutor Bishop Elect Calvin Bess is happy with any form of address, but when pressed for his choice said he would simply prefer "Bishop as Milord is too formal and highbrow."
The Bishop Elect takes up residence at Hayes Court on January 17, one day after Bishop Rawle Douglin demits office, accompanied by his wife of just four years, Catherine, and two year old son, Wendell Calvin.
Sixty-one year old Canon Bess is seen as the proverbial dark horse whose name was never mentioned in the electoral process which started in 1999 and continued through 2000. However, says the Canon " eighteen monts ago, prior to all the elections, I was asked to allow my name to go forward for consideration. But I said absolutely not because I never thought of myself as a Bishop."
The change of heart came "following the frequent attempts and the corresponding failures and then the work of the Selection Committee involving Father Branche. At the end of it all one of the senior priests of the Diocese came to me and said Calvin you must reconsider because we have serious problems."
"I began asking myself some personal questions. Is it God's Will that I should because this thing should have been settled long ago. Suppose it is God's Will, am I willing to fight God? I went to the Holy Cross, Marabella parish where I worked and said to the members of the prayer group: I am not asking you to pray for me to be Bishop but pray whatever God wants will be done because I really do not want to be the Bishop."
"The question was: What does God want. The way I see it is that nothing could happen that is contrary to what God desires. Father Branche was there again so too Canon Titus." The majority vote went to Canon Bess.
Born in Waterloo, Carapichaima, Bess came to live in Port of Spain at age ten and became a member of the Cathedral Parish where he was server, chorister and member of the youth group. "The boundaries of my world were the Cathedral and it seemed only too natural that I become a priest. Also I always wanted to work with people, to be involved in a life that would help other people. This was the direction that would fulfil the desire to work with people."
After graduating from ideal High School, Bess taught for a short while at Richmond Street Boys Anglican School and by age 23 entered Codrington Theological College in Barbados. He was ordained at the Holy Trinity Cathedral by Bishop William James Hughes in June 1966 and Deacon Bess was sent to St Andrew's in Scarborough, Tobago "which I enjoyed thoroughly. The highlight of my time in Tobago was working with the Youth Group repairing homes of the deprived to make them more habitable. I could at that time wield a hammer and saw wood."
In 1968 he returned to Trinidad as assistant curate at the Cathedral to Dean David Chaplain. And in 1969 went back to Tobago, his first parish as parish priest of St Patrick's, the church on the hill at Mount Pleasant. In 1972 Father Bess entered the University of the West Indies to read for a degree in English, but found the time to be the assistant priest at St Paul's parish in San Fernando.
On his graudation from UWI in 1975, Father Bess went back to assist at St Andrew's in Tobago and at the same time taught at Bishop's High School. "I planned to remain there but my mother, Evangeline Bess, fell ill and I felt it my duty to return so I got a transfer to Trinidad and went to teach at the Government Secondary School in San Fernando. I was asked to look after Holy Cross parish by Bishop Abdulah in 1978 for one year which extended to 23 years up to 2001."
At Holy Cross, Canon Bess played a major part in the building of four churches in the parish at four different points. Holy Cross parish church in Marabella had been destroyed by fire; The Church of Our Lady and St Margaret's at Plaisance Park, a temporary structure donated by Texaco was replaced; St Simon and St Jude at Claxton Bay had already been demolished when he got to the parish; and St Peter's Gasparillo was structurally unsafe. Canon Bess has been celebrating Mass at two of the churches every Sunday in the year while his Lay Ministers serviced the other two.
This dimunitive but obviously very strong padre has always worked outside of his pastoral duties. And after teaching English and History in 78/79 at the San Fernando Secondary School, went to work with the Chief Personnel Officer as a Training Officer in the Central Trining Unit. From 1983 to December 2000, he worked with the Airports Authority first as Senior Training Officer to 1989, and from 1990 to his retirement last month as Human Resources Manager.
As he takes up full-time pastoral life, Bishop Elect Bess is aware that census figures have shown the Anglican Church has lost a great deal in terms of membership. "Comments frequently made by members of our own congregations, expressing all kinds of concern about various aspects of our church, must be taken very seriously. My approach would be to work with the body of clergy to determine why the membership decline is taking place and to devise the necessary strategies to prevent this from happening, and more than that to put our church into a growth pattern. But I think the first thing we ought to do is to stop the decline, and that is top priority."
The Bishop Elect is aware that we are going to have to search for the best possible ways of bringing about renewal in the Anglican church but feels very certain it is possible.
He also remains positive about the shortage of priests, and one of his very first tasks as Bishop Elect was yesterday's mid-day ordination of five new priests - Deacons Carlyle Adams, Gloria Waldron, Roland Pierre, Egbert Thomas and Pam Greaves - at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, which should help to fill some of our vacant parishes. On the other side to these supposed shortages is the fact that quite a number of Trinidad priests now work in North America "not necessarily because of rifts" he says "people do those kinds of things, so the Diocese has produced a number of priests but it does not now have the services of all the priests produced. I intend to invite people to come back."
And the most approachable Bishop Elect sends this message to his flock: "I am a listener and am willing to listen to as many people as would like to talk with me. I believe in including people. I shall seek to exclude no one and look forward to working with all the people of the Diocese to bring about a greater sense of unity seeking to put Christ at the centre of our lives as I think that is the way to Unity. I am not saying it is a very easy task but I think we can do it and with God's help will get there."
"I have already shared many hours of discussions with Bishops Douglin and Abdulah with a view to understanding what I am supposed to be doing so I have already began my inclusive programme. And I am prepared to continue doing this as I go further and further into this new level of Ministry."