was her childhood home in Johannesburg
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 at the Vancouver Peace Summit , in the Netherlands, 2012 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
All Saints Amsterdam, a church in
Amsterdam, by the reverend Joost Röselaers. The church is a congregation of the
Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, a jurisdiction of the
Episcopal Church (United States).
Marriage and controversy In 2015, Tutu married , a Dutch professor of medicine, and moved to
Amstelveen in the Netherlands. 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". == Awards ==