As we mooched around Salisbury Cathedral, admiring the amazing architecture of the eight hundred year old building, the stained glass, the monuments and memorials, we came across a new statue in a niche on the great west front of the building.
We looked around for some notice to tell us who the priest was he stood, Bible in hand, gazing down at us and the other visitors, but there was nothing that we could see. Walking back int the city centre we passed a notice which informed us that the statue was that of Canon Ezra Baya Lawiri and that it had been unveiled on the 12th July, 2008, seventeen years after the death of the canon, who was also a biblical scholar and translator. The statue was made by Jason Battle who used two photographs of the Canon, drawing out his ideas of costume, gesture and other aspects of the figure. He made a quarter size maquette from clay, to show what he intended to do. He also made a full-sized head and then eventually began to work from this straight onto the block of stone he was sculpting.
Ezra Baya Lawiri was born in the Sudan in about 1917, and became a teacher and later a headmaster of a school. He was drawn to the priesthood and after attending the London School of Divinity he returned to the theology college where he had been a student and eventually became its first Sudanese principal. However war came and he and his students fled from Sudan to Uganda. He later returned, but war also returned and tragically, Canon Ezra was killed during a battle, along with one of his four daughters. His gift to his people was his translation of the Bible into Moru, the language of Southern Sudan.
Lois Elsden 