Nelson Mandela is to open Southwark Cathedral's Millennium Courtyard and North Cloister buildings on Saturday 28 April 2001. There will be a service of thanksgiving and dedication in the Cathedral at 11.30am, after which the Bishop of Southwark will bless the new precincts and Mr Mandela will proceed into the new buildings where he will name a room in honour of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The £10.2 million development has been partly funded by a Millennium Lottery grant of £4.2 million. The Cathedral appealed for matching funding in April 1999 when Archbishop Desmond Tutu launched the request.

The Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, comments:
"We are humbled and thrilled that Nelson Mandela, probably the most outstanding man of our times, has agreed to visit us and open these buildings. He is renowned for his suffering, passion for justice and almost unimaginable compassion and forgiveness. It is not inappropriate that he should lend his support to Southwark Cathedral as our work is dedicated to expanding our ministry to an area that has always been outcast in terms of London's wealth, the place to which socially marginalized people have come for sanctuary and assistance. This church has ministered to the needs of people on the south bank of the Thames for a thousand years. These buildings mark a change in the nature but not the need for that ministry to continue for the next thousand.

"We could not be more honoured to welcome a second outstanding South African, who is undoubtedly a legend in his own time and an example to us all."

MEDIA ARRANGEMENTS will be announced nearer the date of the event.

Additional information

The buildings are located on the north side of the Cathedral, adjacent to the river exactly where the monastic cloisters once stood, part of which have been rediscovered and are conserved, together with the early Roman Road to London Bridge in the basement of the building.

The new resources have: a Refectory, open to the public; a fine Library overlooking the Thames with specially commissioned stained glass by Ben Finn; teaching and seminar rooms; a Visitor Exhibition which is a hi-tech exploration of Southwark's colourful ecclesiastical and social history with commentary by Zoë Wanamaker, Peter Barker, Prunella Scales, Timothy West and Tommy Steele; the Cathedral Education Centre which assists thousands of children every year now has an underground access past archaeological remains; choral training for children has been expanded by the establishment of a girls' choir to parallel the boys drawn from all over London; the Cathedral itself has the stone restored, cleaned and architecturally lit and the entire churchyard area expanded and landscaped as a green space. Throughout the project resources to assist people with disabilities have been a high priority.

Desmond Tutu was a curate in the diocese of Southwark at the same time as he pursued theological studies at King's College London, this was therefore his Cathedral church.

FURTHER INFORMATION: Rose Harding, Southwark Cathedral: 020-7367 6722.

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