Desmond Tutu, Whose Voice Helped Slay Apartheid, Dies At 90, by Marilyn Berger, The New York Times, December 26, 2021

"As leader of the South African Council of Churches and later as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Archbishop Tutu led the church to the forefront of Black South Africans’ decades-long struggle for freedom. His voice was a powerful force for nonviolence in the anti-apartheid movement, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

When that movement triumphed in the early 1990s, he prodded the country toward a new relationship between its white and Black citizens, and, as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he gathered testimony documenting the viciousness of apartheid.

“You are overwhelmed by the extent of evil,” he said. But, he added, it was necessary to open the wound to cleanse it. In return for an honest accounting of past crimes, the committee offered amnesty, establishing what Archbishop Tutu called the principle of restorative — rather than retributive — justice.

His credibility was crucial to the commission’s efforts to get former members of the South African security forces and former guerrilla fighters to cooperate with the inquiry.

Archbishop Tutu preached that the policy of apartheid was as dehumanizing to the oppressors as it was to the oppressed. At home, he stood against looming violence and sought to bridge the chasm between Black and white; abroad, he urged economic sanctions against the South African government to force a change of policy."

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Archbishop Tutu: "I would not worship a God who is homophobic." by Kristin Deasy, July 26, 2013

"South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Friday said he'd rather go to "the other place" than worship a "homophobic" God, according to BBC News.

The Nobel peace laurete's comments came during the Friday launch of "Free & Equal," the United Nation's (UN) first global public education campaign on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. 

Violence toward these communities is relatively common in South Africa, even though same-sex partnerships have been legalized, said the BBC. 

An anti-apartheid hero in South Africa, Tutu told listeners in Cape Town: "I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid," reported Al Jazeera. 

Tutu retired as archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 and is 81 years old, said the BBC. Death is not the faraway abstraction for him that it is for the young. Even so, "I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven," he earlier said, according to Al Jazeera. "No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place."

"I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this," he said."

Mutual love in heaven consists in those there loving their neighbour more than themselves, and as a result the whole of heaven represents so to speak one human being; for by means of mutual love from the Lord all are associated together in that way. Consequently every manifestation of happiness possessed by all is communicated to each individual, and that possessed by each individual to all. The heavenly form produced by this is such that everyone is so to speak a kind of centre point, thus the centre point of communications and therefore of manifestations of happiness from all. And this takes place in accordance with all the variant forms of that love, which are countless. And because those in whom that love reigns experience supreme happiness in being able to communicate to others that which flows into them, and to do so from the heart, the communication consequently becomes perpetual and eternal. And as the Lord's kingdom increases from the communication so does the happiness of each individual.

Disturb us, O Lord

when we are too well-pleased with ourselves 
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, 
because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, O Lord

when with the abundance of things we possess, 
we have lost our thirst for the water of life 
when, having fallen in love with time, 
we have ceased to dream of eternity 
and in our efforts to build a new earth, 
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.

Stir us, O Lord

to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas 
where storms show Thy mastery, 
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes 
and invited the brave to follow.

Amen

(Attributed to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu adapted from an original prayer by Sir Francis Drake.)

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