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The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee has appointed Willie McLaurin to serve as interim presi­dent and CEO, marking the first time that any entity of the predominantly White denomination has been headed by a Black person.

McLaurin was named just over two years ago as the committee’s vice president for Great Commission relations and mobilization, a new role meant to focus on spreading the gospel and fostering relations with various demographic groups of Southern Baptists.

Abune Antonios, a confined Eritrean Orthodox Church patriarch and the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in the Horn of Africa, died on February 9 at age 94.

He had been in detention in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, since his arrest in 2006, just two years after his installation as the third patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Church. For 16 years, he was kept in solitary confinement under the orders of the country’s authoritarian leader, President Isaias Afwerki, for his resistance to government interference in the church.

Tania Tetlow has been unanimously elected the next president of Ford­ham University. Tet­low will be the first woman and the first layperson to lead the 181-year-old Jesuit institution. She replaces Joseph Mc­Shane, who announced his intention to step down from nearly two decades of leadership last fall.

Tetlow joins Fordham from Loyola University New Orleans, where she was also the first woman and layperson to serve as president. She is credited with increasing both enrollment and student retention at Loyola during her four-year tenure.

Thich Nhat Hanh, global Buddhist spiritual leader and longtime Viet­namese political exile, died on January 22. He was 95.

He had been in declining health and returned to Vietnam three years ago, expressing a wish to spend his remaining days at his root temple in Hue.

Thich Nhat Hanh spent 39 years in exile from Vietnam because of pro-peace advocacy that put him in conflict with both the North and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War. He also criticized US involvement in the war.

The National Council of Churches announced on Janu­ary 26 that Jim Winkler, its general secretary and president since 2013, is leaving his post.

Winkler told readers of the Protestant ecumenical organization’s e-newsletter of his departure, writing in a “final column” that “I have completed two terms as president and general secretary and now move to the next chapter of my life.”

He did not cite a reason for his departure. Winkler also did not re­spond to a request to comment on his move.

Gabriel Yemba Unda, the first United Methodist bishop of the East Congo Episcopal Area, has been elected provincial president of the Church of Christ in the Congo in the Congolese district of Maniema.

The CCC is a union of 95 of the country’s Protestant denominations.

Unda—who also is the moderator of the National Synod of the Church of Christ in the Congo—obtained 66 out of 91 votes in the elections. He will preside over various denominations of the Protestant churches in Maniema for the next six years. Unda succeeds Bishop Joseph Bitingo Lusambya, who died in April 2021.