Gustavo Vasquez: CIEMAL College of Bishops and Presidents Elects New Board of Directors

Today's post is by Rev. Gustavo Vasquez, Director of Hispanic/Latino Communications at United Methodist News. It originally appeared in a Spanish version on UMNews. It has been translated by David W. Scott and appears here by permission.

In very challenging times due to the effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the College of Bishops and Presidents of CIEMAL (Consejo de Iglesias Evangelicas Metodistas de America Latina y el Caribe; the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean) has elected its new Board of Directors for the 2022-2027 quinquennium.

The election process took place on November 26-27, 2022 virtually via Zoom, where bishops and presidents of the Methodist churches in the Latin American and Caribbean region met to deliberate and choose new officers.

According to an announcement from the group, it is the first time that the process happened virtually, as “this type of election has usually been done in person,” but after the COVID-19 pandemic affected normal air travel and health requirements for international travel, many of the meetings and events have happened online.

The result of the election process has led to a new Board of Directors composed of Bishop Lizzette Gabriel Montalvo, of the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico, who is the first woman elected as president of this collegial body; Bishop Bruno Roberto Pereira dos Santos, of the Methodist Church in Brazil, as vice president; and Dr. Evelyn Wibmer Murdoch, of the Methodist Church in Uruguay, as secretary.

Bishop Gabriel had been president of the entire CIEMAL body in the 2012-2017 quinquennium and vice president in the 2017-2022 quinquennium and now appears for the first time as president of its College of Bishops and Presidents. She was recently elected as the first woman to occupy the episcopacy of the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico.

Together with Bishop Gabriel will be Bishop Bruno Roberto Pereira dos Santos, who for his part was recently elected bishop of the 4th Episcopal Region of the Methodist Church in Brazil. Pereira dos Santos is also the secretary of the College of Bishops of the Brazilian church.

At the same time, Dr. Evelyn Wibmer Murdoch is a lay leader elected as president of the Methodist Church in Uruguay in June 2021 and now will be the new secretary of the College of Bishops and Presidents of CIEMAL.

For its part, the Board of Directors which has been in office since 2017 and ended its term in these last elections was made up of the bishops Juan de Dios Peña Gallegos of the Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador as president; Samuel Aguilar Cury of the Methodist Church of Peru as vice president; and Hideide Brito Torres of the 8th Episcopal Region of the Methodist Church in Brazil, who was the secretary of the board.

According to the announcement by CIEMAL, the College of Bishops and Presidents “is a body of CIEMAL whose purposes are pastoral accompaniment for the church in Latin America and the Caribbean and to be a prophetic voice in the face of the new challenges and new realities that confront the church and society in the region.”

Brief biographies of the members of the new Board of Directors of the College of Bishops and Presidents of CIEMAL are below:

Lizzette Gabriel Montalvo has been a pastor in the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico since July 1989. She has had outstanding leadership in the Emmaus Community of Puerto Rico since her participation in Walk #3 in Mexico (1989). She has actively participated in the opening of new communities in Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey.

She was certified as a Spiritual Director at the Academy of Spiritual Formation #22 held in San Antonio, Texas. She led three Academies in her country and was the first woman recognized as Chaplain of the National Guard of Puerto Rico (1994). Currently, she has participated as a volunteer on the Citizen Interaction Committee, Puerto Rico Command of Caguas.

She has been a member of the Alzheimer's Society of Puerto Rico since 2019 and serves as spiritual director for the Caguas chapter of the support group for Alzheimer's caregivers. She was the first spokesperson for the Faith Based Organizations Advisory Committee for the city of Caguas.

Bruno Roberto Pereira dos Santos is a bishop of the Methodist Church in Brazil assigned to the 4th Episcopal Region, which includes the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo.

He is the current secretary of the College of Bishops of the Methodist Church in Brazil, with 20 years of pastoral ministry. In Rio de Janeiro, he was pastor in the capital and the rural areas of the state and was a district superintendent.

Bishop Pereira dos Santos has been married for 18 years and has three children. A member of the church since he was a child, he entered the theological school of the Brazilian Methodist church and received his first pastoral assignment at 21 years old.

Currently, he is studying for a postgraduate degree in theological pedagogy and was homiletics professor at the César Dacorso Filho Seminary for the training of new pastors.

Evelyn Wibmer Murdoch is a lay leader and current president of the Methodist Church in Uruguay.

She was born and raised in Montevideo, the capital of the country. Married, months away from her golden jubilee, mother of four children, and grandmother of five grandchildren, she comes from a Methodist family of several generations.

She has been a member of the church since she was a teenager, member of the committee of directors of Central Methodist Church, representative to national assemblies, vice president of the National Board of Life and Mission (JNVM) between 2012 and 2015, and president of JNVM from July 2021 to this date.

She is a medical doctor with postgraduate experience in internal medicine and nephrology and studies in health management and the management of dialysis centers. She developed her career at the Mutualista Evangelical Hospital, where she was General Manager from 2015 to 2019. She was representative of the mutual sector to the National Resources Fund from 2011 to 2015; co-founder of an acute dialysis center, two chronic dialysis centers, and a kidney transplant center; and president of the medical guild of Mutualista Evangelical Hospital in two separate periods.