Expatriate Dean returns

Press, 25 August 1980, Page 4

Expatriate Dean returns

A former Christchurch man is the dean of one of the biggest Anglican dioceses in the world, at the age of 38.

The Very Rev. Derek Eaton is Dean of Cairo Cathedral; his diocese includes Egypt, Ethiopia, and Somalia. He is in Christchurch on two months leave with his wife and three children, and will return to Egypt next month.

Dean Eaton, an old boy of Christchurch Boys’ High School and a former New Zealand swimming champion, has been away from New Zealand for 15 years, most of them spent in Middle-East countries.

Between 1972 and 1978 the Eatons lived in Tunisia, and during this time about 500 young people came and went at their house. They included drug addicts, dropouts, and young travellers. The National Church of Egypt in 1978 invited Dean Eaton to become Dean of Cairo Cathedral, a post

usually associated with a much older man.

“The Church mainly caters for expatriates living in Cairo, but about half of our 250 congregation are Egyptians and Africans,” Dean Eaton said.

He said that his congregation had trebled in three 'years, even though it was illegal for a Muslim to change his religion. Relations with most Muslims were good, Dean Eaton said, but there was a general resurgence of their religion. When he took over his post in 1978 the old Anglican cathedral was being demolished, to make way for a motorway. The Egyptian Government offered to pay for a new one; which was now under construction on Zamalek Island, in the Nile River.

It is believed that the cathedral will be finished in two years. It will cost $750,000Dean Eaton enjoys living in Cairo, which he believes to be the “religious and cultural centre of the Middle East;"-. ; ’ •