Seldom has the world’s electronic and print media paid so much attention to honouring a public figure as it has to Light From Africa Foundation’s (LFAF) Founding Patron Archbishop Desmond Tutu, following his death on 26 December 2021. We are immensely proud and honoured to have had his patronage since 2004.

LFAF Founding Board Member, Bishop Christopher Gregorowski, worked very closely with Archbishop Tutu throughout his time as Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, and continued to stay close to him and his ideals ever since.

Bishop Christopher penned this moving tribute to “The Arch” in honour of his contribution to LFAF and our beneficiary families:

“The Arch” has been a wonderful example to us in so many ways! We have been enriched by his love, his pastoral care, his infectious joy, his sense of fun and above all his courageous leadership in very painful, tense and tragic circumstances in South Africa.  

I shall never forget the Great March through the streets of Cape Town on 13th September 1989, which sounded the death knell of apartheid.  As he said shortly afterwards, with his characteristic chuckle, “We marched in Cape Town, and the Berlin Wall came down!”

I have been most grateful to him for the unique way in which he wove into one seamless garment his deep and infectious spirituality and his thirst and courageous demand for justice in South Africa and many other parts of the world.   

I was deeply moved and inspired at one of the many protests in Saint George’s Cathedral — often on these occasions it was difficult to tell whether we were in a service of prayer and worship or at a protest rally. The speaker before him, a man of the cloth, tore into the apartheid government in general and the state president in particular, in the manner of a firebrand, with no holds barred. The Arch then came to the lectern, waited for a hush to descend on the packed church, and addressed the same state president by his name, called him “my brother” and with tears in his voice pleaded with him as a fellow human being to exercise his responsibility and power justly and fairly, and to regard all people as the precious children of God they are.

We are deeply grateful to him for living the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with such passion and authenticity, and thereby challenging us all to do the same.  He has influenced our lives immeasurably.  

The Light From Africa Foundation sends our loving and deep condolences to MaLeah Tutu and the Tutu family.

Bishop Christopher Gregorowski

Founding Member

Light From Africa Foundation