Mpho Andrea Tutu

Mpho Andrea Tutu van Furth (born 1963) is a South African Anglican priest, author and activist. She is the daughter of Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu. She co-wrote two books with her father, and a biography about him with the journalist Allister Sparks. She was ordained in 2003 as a priest in the Episcopal Church in the United States, and later served in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Since 2016, the South African church will not permit her to work as a priest because she is married to a woman, Marceline van Furth. In 2015 they moved to the Netherlands, Marceline's native country, where she served as a priest in Amsterdam at Vrijburg in 2022, and with All Saints, a mission of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe between 2022 and 2025.

Biography

Early life Mpho Andrea Tutu was born in London to Nomalizo Tutu, a South African activist, and Desmond Tutu, an Anglican bishop. She was 31 years old when apartheid ended in 1994.

Career

Tutu van Furth was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2003. She received her master's degree from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Tutu van Furth has co-authored a number of books including Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World and Tutu: The Authorised Portrait; The former two books were written with her father and the latter with journalist Allister Sparks. She made news for forgiving the murderer of her housekeeper in 2012. She and her father have advocated for forgiveness in the wake of racial tensions and police shootings in the United States. As a public speaker, she has shared the stage with The 14th Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, Ken Robinson and others.

Tutu van Furth was the founding director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation and served as executive director from 2011 to 2016.

On 30 January 2022, Mpho Tutu van Furth was confirmed as pastor of Vrijburg, a church in Amsterdam, by the reverend Joost Röselaers.

Marriage and controversy In 2015, Tutu married , a Dutch professor of medicine, and moved to Amstelveen in the Netherlands. Shortly after the marriage, the Diocese of Saldanha Bay withdrew her license as a priest. Both of her parents were supportive of her marriage. In 2016 the BBC reported that the Anglican Church of South Africa is looking at new guidelines for members who enter same-sex unions, but it is "not clear whether there will be any change when it comes to same-sex marriages of church clerics".

In regards to her marriage, Tutu van Furth said, "I had the extreme good fortune of growing up in a household with parents who were very clear about their faith and very clear about full inclusion of all people ... regardless of gender and gender identity and regardless of sexual orientation." Her father said in 2013 that he would never "worship a God who is homophobic" and both of them have been active in calls for LGBT equality. Desmond Tutu stated that he was "as passionate about [the campaign against homophobia] as I ever was about apartheid".

In September 2022, the Church of England's Diocese of Hereford refused a request to allow her to conduct a funeral in the diocese, that of her godfather and her father's friend the anti-apartheid campaigner Martin Kenyon, because she is married to a woman (the Church of England does not allow its clergy to marry the same sex). Former Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes criticised the decision and said: "We urgently need to make space for conscience, space for pastoral care, and space for love".

Published works Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference (2010; with Desmond Tutu) Tutu: The Authorised Portrait (2011; with Allister Sparks) The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World (2014; with Desmond Tutu) The Book of Queer Prophets: 24 Writers on Sexuality and Religion (2020; contributor, edited by Ruth Hunt)