The daughter of one of the world’s best-known Christian leaders has given up her right to officiate as a priest in South Africa following marriage to her female partner.
Mpho Tutu-van Furth – whose father, Desmond Tutu, won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa – said the move had been forced on her following her wedding to a Dutch academic.
“The canon [law] of the South African church states that marriage is between one man and one woman,” she said in a statement. After her marriage, the South African bishop who had given her permission to officiate as a priest in his diocese “was advised that he must revoke my licence. I offered to return my licence rather than require that he take it from me,” she added.
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