GEORGETOWN, Apr. 19, CMC – Bishops in the Anglican Church of the Province of the West Indies (CPWI) are due to begin arriving here on Saturday for a provincial conference of clerics, the Demerara Waves online news service said Thursday.

The Anglican Diocese of Guyana is hosting the biennial Provincial Clergy Gathering from Sunday to Friday April 27 at the Regency Suites Hotel.

Clerics from the CPWI’s eight dioceses – Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, North Eastern Caribbean and Aruba , Trinidad and Tobago, Windward Islands and host Guyana – are to attend the conference whose theme is “Pursuing the Call”.

The gathering will begin with a mass on Sunday afternoon at the ornate, all-timber St. George’s Cathedral – the seat of the Bishop of Guyana – to be presided over by Archbishop of the West Indies Dr. John Holder and Bishop of Guyana Cornel Jerome Moss.

The bishops get down to the business of the conference on Monday following a welcome by Diocesan Chancellor Justice Desiree Bernard.

Social activities are to include a reception hosted by the Bishop of Guyana, a Cultural Show at Theatre Guild and tours to places of interest, Demerarawaves reported.

The CPWI is one of 38 autonomous provinces in the Anglican communion, the global association of national and regional Anglican churches in communion with the Church of England.

Estimated at 80 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The West Indies became a self-governing province in 1883 of the Church of England, once the established church in the British West Indies.