Philip Welsford Richmond Russell (1919 – 2013) HILIP Russell Died in Adelaide, Australia on 25 July 2013

Obituaries

Dr Mgojo fell ill in late 2011. After Vuyokazi. He also leaves behind his two operations his health suddenly siblings Nondumiso, Mbulelo and and rapidly took a turn for the worse. Nomlindelo. After a spell in various hospitals in Port Your loved ones, your colleagues, Shepstone, Margate, Durban and Piet- your friends, the nation and the Church ermaritzburg he succumbed peacefully of Christ salute you Khukhuva, Mbuyisa, on 2 September 2012 in his 81st year. Mvemnyama, Sondisa, Nziph’ezinde He leaves behind his wife of 53 years, ngokuqhwayana, Omabele amade Stella MamBhele (née Makalima); ngokuncelisa. two adult children, his son Mxolisi and You have run the race, fought the fight his wife Thandeka; a daughter Nosipo and kept the faith! and two grandchildren, Malwande and  MVUME DANDALA Philip Welsford Richmond Russell (1919 – 2013) HILIP Russell died in Adelaide, Australia on 25 July 2013. He Pwas 93 years old. From working as a quantity surveyor to service in a bomb disposal unit during the Second World War to ministry as Anglican priest, bishop and archbishop, he had a varied and distinguished career as a loyal Natalian and South African. He was born in Durban in 1919, and attended Clifton Preparatory School at Cowie’s Hill and Durban High School where he matriculated in 1935. In 1936 he joined the Active Citizen Force and from 1937-1940 served articles as a quantity surveyor in training with the firm Sinclair and Walters in Durban. This training gave him a keen eye later for practical things that needed atten- tion on church facilities. He would not hesitate to scale heights to inspect Philip Russell as Bishop of Natal, roofs and gutters and such like, never taken after he had celebrated the first seeing any need to separate the sacred Eucharist after the amalgamation of from the secular. He was a very rounded the former parishes of St Saviour’s and human being. St Peter’s to form the new Cathedral The bravest decision in Russell’s life of the Holy Nativity, Whitsunday 1976. was to volunteer for bomb disposal (Photo: Diocesan Archives, Diocese work during the Second World War. of Natal)

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First as sergeant, then as lieutenant, accepted as an ordination candidate by beginning at the tender age of 21, he Leonard Fisher, the Bishop of Natal, worked in North Africa with the 95th but the outbreak of the war put his plans Bomb Disposal Company of the South on hold. The furnace of the war years African Engineers. He received an simply strengthened his conviction, and MBE for his services, the commenda- in 1946 he and Eirene came to Graha- tion for which read as follows: mstown where he undertook his formal On 6 November 1942 Lieutenant studies, first towards a Bachelor of Arts Russell received instructions to clear degree at Rhodes University College the railway line of mines from Tel and then for a Licentiate in Theology El Eisa to Tobruk, a distance of 350 at the nearby St Paul’s Theological miles. He commenced work on the College. These were formative years 8th November and had successfully cementing a different marriage between completed the task by 15 November intellectual pursuit and spiritual growth, during which time his party, under each of them grounded in a compassion- his direct supervision, removed 157 ate concern for society with its sorrows, mines and extracted 4 booby traps and about 40 unexploded charges. injustices and aspirations. Due extensively to Lieutenant Russell’s ecclesiastical career fol- Russell’s organisation and ability, the lowed in a steady flow which soon railway line was used again in time revealed solid and outstanding qualities. to materially assist operations of the Made deacon in 1950 and ordained advancing army. Since that date he has priest the following year, he worked worked well forward with the Army as successively in the parishes of St Pe- it advanced and has cleared landing ter’s in Pietermaritzburg, St James’ in fields of bombs and booby traps, Greytown, All Saints’ in Ladysmith and, enabling the RAF to establish forward landing grounds in record time. finally, St Agnes’ in Kloof, where he was also Archdeacon of the Pinetown Organisation and ability and true archdeaconry, thereby sharing respon- courage remained hallmarks of Rus- sibility with the Bishop of Natal for a sell’s career from that day on. cluster of several parishes. In 1966 he From North Africa he moved with was elevated to the episcopate, first as invading Allied forces to Italy in 1943. the Bishop Suffragan of Cape Town, At this point he was allowed to transfer then as the first Bishop of the newly cre- to the Union Defence Force Institutes ated Diocese of Port Elizabeth in 1970 (UDFI), a non-militarist merger of the before returning to his home Diocese YMCA and Toc H which saw to the wel- of Natal as its bishop in 1974. With all fare of the troops. The pastoral role of this experience behind him, his brother later years was beginning to come to the bishops elected him in 1978 to be, in ad- fore. Another landmark event occurred dition, Dean of the Province (that is, the for him while he was in Rome, for there bishop next senior to the Archbishop). he met fellow-South African Eirene While Bishop of Natal, Russell Hogarth, whom he married in 1945 at played a key role in the decision to the Garrison Church, Foggia, Italy. build the new Cathedral of the Holy The desire to seek ordination in the Nativity on its present site and thereby church began in 1939 before Russell’s to unite the two parishes of St Peter’s 20th birthday. Later that year he was and St Saviour’s, bringing to an end

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Natalia 42 (2012) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2012 Obituaries the division among Anglicans in Piet- Most of his retirement ministry was ermaritzburg which reached back to the ecumenical. He was treasurer and chair Colenso era in the 19th century. successively of the Diakonia Council of In 1981, after an abortive election in Churches, the prominent social justice the Cape Town Elective Assembly, the agency in Durban. Ever the practical Synod of Bishops, to whom the decision man, he also chaired the Management had been canonically delegated, chose Committee of the Koinonia Conference Russell to be Archbishop of Cape Town Centre at Botha’s Hill, having been in- in succession to his war contemporary, timately involved in the establishment Bill Burnett. He and Eirene went to of this residential facility in his earlier this work with a good heart. Far from Natal years. In addition, from 1983 being a caretaker archbishop, Russell through to 1995 he was a member of the left a major impact on the entire Church Central Committee of the World Coun- of the Province of Southern Africa by cil of Churches, a body anathematised what the Church’s newspaper, Seek, by the Nationalist Government. described as “his enormous energy”. To his quiet joy, Philip had the title This was accompanied by his fine “Archbishop Emeritus” conferred on organising skill and mature pastoral him by the Synod of Bishops in 1997. sense, all of it seasoned by a lively and Philip’s beloved war-bride, Eirene, somewhat puckish sense of humour. In died on 31 January 2001. They had been addition, he did not shy away from the married for almost 56 years. Three of need to be prophetic as the apartheid their four children, all married, were state tightened its tyrannical grip on the by then living in Adelaide, Australia, country in the early 1980s. He served on and Philip was persuaded to emigrate the executives of both the SA Institute in order to be close to them. Thus the of Race Relations and the SA Council final stage of his life began. He never of Churches. lost his love for South Africa, keeping Russell retired as Archbishop on 31 in touch so far as he could with its af- August 1986, Desmond Tutu having fairs of church and state, remembering been elected to succeed him in April. it daily in his intercessory prayers. His He and Eirene moved back to Durban, family has described him as “a warm where he had been born and brought and loving father, grandfather and great- up and where he had been the seventh grandfather (who) has been ‘father-in- Bishop of Natal. His was an active re- God’ to many more”. tirement, though he coined the telling MICHAEL NUTTALL remark “When you’re out, you’re out”.

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