This note is a tribute to the Right Reverend J Henry Okullu, whose death on March 13 was reported in an Ecumenical News International release this morning.

Because of his formal training in journalism and his professional career, in Uganda and Kenya, before becoming a bishop, he was appointed in 1985 by Canon Samuel Van Culin to the International Advisory Committee to establish the Inter Anglican Information Network (IAIN). The Committee met in Washington, DC, in January 1996.

Bishop Okullu fully understood the potential of data packet networks to change the way in which humans communicate. He was fascinated by the idea that Kenyan Anglicans, for example, might at last avoid government interception of messages, by using modems to transmit them.

On the other hand, he eloquently reminded the rest of us that few in developing nations had either electricity or telephones. He strongly supported Dr D Bruce Merrfield's plea that our primary goal be "to level the playing field in telecommunications for our Global South partners."

The last time that I saw Bishop Okullu, he was in the Trinity Grants Program offices packing boxes with a CPU, monitor, and assorted peripherals, in the hope of successfully taking it all back home with him... some of it as "hand luggage." Sadly, I don't think he was ever able to use email from his home in Kisumu, because he could not get a stable telephone line.

May his soul, and the souls of all departed faithful, rest in peace.

Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gifts, including the life of his faithful servant, John Henry Okullu.

Odessa Elliott
(formerly of the Trinity Grants Programme, New York, USA)