Desmond Tutu, the well-known social and Anglican leader of South Africa, died on Sunday 26 December in Cape Town.

The priest and activist was 90 years old. He had been diagnosed with cancer two decades ago.

His foundation has announced the celebration of his funeral on 1 January in the St. George Cathedral. Seven days of mourning have been announced in the capital city of South Africa and all kind of activities are being organised to honour his figure.

Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his promotion of nonviolence in the fight against the South African apartheid. He also was honoured with other prominent awards such as the Templeton Prize (2013).

He was Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town for 10 years, between 1986 and 1996.

Retired from public life in the last decade, Tutu leaves a vast literary work, with titles such as No Future Without Forgiveness, An African Prayerbook, Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Speeches. In the beginning of 2021, Tutu signed with other 350 theologically liberal religious leaders a declaration in favour of banning the so-called ‘conversion therapies’.

Reactions to his death

Many political and opinion leaders expressed their grief after Tutu’s decease was made public. “It is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa (…) the Arch [as Desmond Tutu was called by many] distinguished himself as a nonsectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights”, said the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. “May we too be worthy inheritors of the mantle of service, of selflessness, of courage, and of principled solidarity with the poor and marginalised”.

Above all, let us abide by the words of First Corinthians 13, verse 13:

 

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

 

He loved his fellow men and women. He loved the Church. He loved his country.

 #RIPDesmondTutu

— Cyril Ramaphosa (@CyrilRamaphosa) December 26, 2021

The former President of the United States, Barack Obama, acknowledged Tutu as a “a moral compass for me and so many others”. On Twitter, he said Tutu was “grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries”.

Today’s Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, said: “He felt with the people. In public and alone, he cried because he felt people’s pain. And he laughed—no, not just laughed, he cackled with delight—when he shared their joy”.

Moral and social convictions

Desmond Tutu was President of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. “I have been given the ministry of reconciliation”, he once said, adding that Christians should be “passionate” in their oposition to injustice of any kind, because “nobody should be dumped as if they were rubbish”.

In an interview with Religion News Service in 2011, the Anglican priest expressed: “I could myself not have survived had I not been buttressed by my spiritual disciplines of prayer, quiet, and regular attendance at the Eucharist”.

Speaking to Christianity Today, he said: “We can easily think we have a hotline to God and that our purely human insights have divine approval (…) And activism based on religion, in and of itself, is not necessarily a good thing. It has been religious fanatics who have done some of the greatest damage in the world”. “We can also be intolerant. Activism can mean dismissing those who hold a different point of view as being beyond the pale”.

In 2014, when he visited Barcelona to receive the International Prize of Catalonia, Tutu was interviewed by ethnomusicologist Carla Suárez in an interview published on Spanish news website Protestante Digital. “It would have been very difficult for people to forgive if it was not for their faith”, the South African leader said, referring to transition process from apartheid to democracy.