An ecclesiastical court considering charges against a bishop from the Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa was left in confusion on Aug. 25 after the presiding judge withdrew from the case before the Rt. Rev. Nolbert Kunonga, Bishop of Harare, entered a plea. The hearing deteriorated after Bishop Kunonga’s lawyer refused to participate in the trial, advising his client not to enter a plea and stating he would not offer a defense unless his demands for further evidence were met.

A close ally of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe, Bishop Kunonga, 55, is accused of 38 charges, including heresy, fraud, and scandalizing the Anglican Communion. The most serious, however, was that Bishop Kunonga asked members of the Zimbabwe secret police to assassinate 10 priests and lay people “whom he named.” A former student at Northwestern University in Illinois and Cambridge University in England, he was brought before the tribunal on Aug. 23 and is the only church leader banned by the State Department from entering the U.S. for complicity in the crimes of the Mugabe regime.

The three-judge tribunal, led by Malawi Supreme Court Justice James Kalaile; Bishop Leonard Mwenda of Lusaka, Zambia; and Bishop Albert Chama of Northern Zambia, convened at the clubhouse of the Royal Harare Golf Club, after the dean of St Mary’s Cathedral, Harare, refused to allow them to meet at the church. Prosecutor Jeremy Lewis dropped the incitement to murder charge on Aug. 23 after the court refused to accept on technical grounds an affidavit and testimony by a video link to London to hear evidence from the Rev. James Mukunga, an Anglican priest, who fled to London with his family after he was beaten by police for refusing to silence critics of the bishop and Mugabe government in his parish. Fr. Mukunga said he would not return to Zimbabwe to testify in person for fear for his life, but agreed to travel to Malawi to testify on the incitement to murder charges. The prosecution described Bishop Kunonga’s demands as “vexatious” and said it would re-file the incitement to murder charges in a ecclesiastical court outside Zimbabwe.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, declined comment on the case to The Living Church. However, the controversial bishop’s actions have not hurt his standing within the wider Anglican Church in Africa. Last October Bishop Kunonga was asked to preach at the first African Anglican Bishops’ Conference in Lagos, Nigeria.

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