Order honours brigadier and bishop

Press, 29 August 1986, Page 5

Order honours brigadier and bishop

The former Catholic Bishop of Christchurch and a retired Army officer will be admitted to high-ranking posts in the charitable Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem at its annual admissions and promotions ceremony in Christchurch Cathedral tomorrow.

The Bishop, the Most Rev. Brian Ashby, will be admitted to the order as a senior chaplain. The retired officer, and now superintendent of Dunedin Hospital, Brigadier Brian McMahon, is already a member of the order and will be promoted from Commander to Knight of Grace. Bishop Ashby’s post as a senior chaplain would be similar in status to that of Knight of Grace, said the southern commander of the order, Mr Bert Walker.

Bishop Ashby will be presented with a cloak bearing the insignia of Knight of Grace by a former long-serving New Zealand Anglican Bishop in East Africa, the Rt Rev. Maxwell Wiggins. Bishop Wiggins, a former Bishop of Victoria Nyanza, served in East Africa for more than 30 years. In 1975 he returned to New Zealand, becoming the Suffragan Bishop of Wellington. He now relieves at parishes throughout New Zealand. Brigadier McMahon will be presented with a

Maltese cross. The ceremony will begin at the Cathedral at 11 a.m. with a procession of sword-bearers and crossbearers. Six other members of the order will also be promoted during the ceremony. St Lazarus of Jerusalem is a non-denominational military and hospital order. It supported research into leprosy and all forms of skin diseases, including research into treating injuries caused by nuclear explosions or accidents, said Mr Walker. The order was founded in New Zealand in 1962, but its origins are thought to go back to A.D. 72, when it was instituted for the defence of persecuted Christians. It was only in later centuries that the order became engaged in helping to relieve the suffering caused by leprosy. In the last 18 months, the Southern Commandry of the New Zealand order had sent seven cases of selected drugs, each valued about $lO,OOO, to Bayley Clinic, a specialist skin disease hospital in Fiji, said Mr Walker. Earlier this year the order also gave money to the relief fund for victims of the South Canterbury floods.

More recently, the order organised the free skin cancer clinics in Christchurch, which more than 500 people attended.