CASTRIES (CMC): Cardinal Kelvin Felix, the first person from the English-speaking Caribbean to have been elevated to that position, died on Thursday after a prolonged illness. He was 91 years old.
Pope Francis, who made Felix a Cardinal on February 22, 2014, for his service to the church, said then that the decision to appoint the Dominican-born Felix as a Cardinal was due to his “long and dedicated service to the Holy See and to the Church.”
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Cardinal Felix had regarded his elevation as providing “a zest to the whole Church in the Caribbean and recognition to the Episcopal Conference which I have served as president for three times.
“This appointment is also a great sign of appreciation for the tireless and dedicated pastoral ministry of all our bishops and for the Church of the Caribbean,” he said then.
In January 2023, the Dioceses of the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC) had been asked to pray for the full recovery of Cardinal Felix who had been hospitalised with with COVID-19.
The cause of death of the first diocesan priest from Roseau and the first Catholic priest to be ordained in Dominica, has not yet been released.
Cardinal Felix had served as Archbishop Emeritus of Castries in the Caribbean Sea. He was also the former president of the Caribbean Conference of Churches, the Antilles Episcopal Conference and a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family as well as a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
He was one of the nine children and was was ordained a priest in 1956. He studied at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he got a degree in Adult Education in 1963, gained a Masters Degree from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in ssssociology and anthropology in 1967, and completed postgraduate studies in sociology at the University of Bradford in Yorkshire, England in 1970.
After his studies, Felix served as the principal of the Roman Catholic High School in Dominica from 1972-1975, which was then having very serious racial problems because of the Black Power movement; he was successful in solving the problems.
His success in resolving the problems at the Academy, and his humility, keen intelligence and diplomacy, together with his diligence and penchant for effective organisation, led to his appointment as Associate General Secretary of the Caribbean Conference of Churches from 1975-1981.
And in 1981, Father Felix was elevated to the position of Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Castries, St Lucia, responsible for all Catholic dioceses in the Windward and Leeward Islands.
He was professor of Sociology at the University of the West Indies at St Augustine (Trinidad and Tobago) for many years.
