When the Rt. Rev. R. Heber Gooden was consecrated Bishop of the Canal Zone and Panama in 1945, at age 34 the youngest Episcopal bishop at that time quickly concluded that he was

being called to oversee the transition of an Anglo-American chaplaincy into a self-sufficient Spanish-speaking see.

Before his death from pneumonia in Shreveport, La., on Feb. 11, Bishop Gooden, 91, witnessed the area he once oversaw achieve provincial status within the Anglican Communion.

In many ways, his episcopacy proved to be a model for how to raise up indigenous clergy and lay leadership in the overseas mission dioceses of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Gooden had been dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Havana for six years when he was ordained missionary bishop in 1945. His diocese contained 12 clergy and about 500,000 square miles. When he left Central America in 1972 to assist the Rt. Rev. Iverson Noland in the Diocese of Louisiana, there were six dioceses and 30 clergy. There are now 10 Latin American dioceses in two provinces and substantially more clergy.