Red Cross of Constantine Orphanage

The images on television of the tsunami disaster were a forcible reminder that children would be one of the main groups requiring immediate and long-term help. The Grand Sovereign of the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, Ronald Champion, had already started a Millennium Fund with the main aim of aiding children in need, and he immediately wrote to all his Intendants-General asking for the support of their Divisions in assisting Galle, the devastated area in southern Sri Lanka. Within six months they raised forty thousand pounds.
     An extension to an already existing orphanage, and capable of housing fifty orphans was chosen, and the funds raised were channelled through Michael Dias, District Grand Master of Mark Master Masons, Sri Lanka. He set up a team to manage the funds locally and to oversee and liaise with the design and construction of the building, which enabled every penny of the donated money to be sent direct to the project.
     The Board of Mark Grand Lodge supported the appeal and donated a substantial sum from the Mark Benevolent Fund. Other Orders administered from Mark Masons’ Hall also gave private, lodge and Provincial assistance and a final total of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds was donated for the building.

Knights Beneficent of the Holy City

Until this year, English Freemasons wishing to become members of the Scottish Rectified Rite had to travel to Belgium to join a continental Order of Freemasonry tracing its roots back to 1754.
     The Knights Beneficent of the Holy City, known on the continent as the Chevaliers Bienfaisant de la Cité Sainte, is worked under the authority of the Great Priory of Switzerland.
     The charter empowering the Great Priory of the Knights Templar of England in this country was granted in 1937. Membership of the Preceptory of St. George, No. 6, is restricted to those personally invited to join it by the Grand Master of the Great Priory of England. This was the Preceptory chosen by the then Grand Master to be the host for the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City in this country. Until some four years ago the maximum number of members of the Order in this country never exceeded nine.
     The Scottish Rectified Rite consists of six degrees, of which the first three are the equivalent of the three degrees of Craft masonry. The 4th degree, that of Scottish Master, is taken in two parts in a lodge of the Scottish Master of St. Andrew, while the 5th and 6th degrees, known as Squire Novice and Knight Beneficent of the Holy City respectively, are taken within in a Commandery.
     Leslie Felgate Dring is the Grand Master of both the Knights Templar and the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City in this country. Recently, assisted by senior members of the Order in England, he consecrated St. James Lodge of St. Andrew, No. 2, which will become the unit enabling Knights Templar to have the 4th, 5th and 6th degrees conferred on them.

New President Appointed to Mark General Board

HRH Prince Michael of Kent, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, has appointed Michael Herbert to be the President of the Mark General Board, and he was invested at the Annual Investiture of ark Grand Lodge at Freemasons’ Hall, London recently. He replaces Keith Carmichael, who is standing down after serving sixteen years.
     Michael Herbert is a popular and well known Freemason, having been Grand Master of the Allied Masonic Degrees since 1996, and from 1995 until 2005 served as the Provincial Grand Master of the Mark for Leicestershire and Rutland. He was until last year a member of the Mark General Board and Grand Master’s Royal Ark Council.
     His first major duty will be to preside at the forthcoming annual festival of the Mark Fund of Benevolence in Telford, under the sponsorship of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Staffordshire and Shropshire, and which last year made a record-breaking donation of £3 million to the National Osteoporosis Society.
     Keith Carmichael was first appointed as President of the Mark General Board in 1991 having previously served as Grand Treasurer since 1977. On retirement he will have been a member of both the General Board and the Grand Master’s Royal Ark Council for 30 years. His contribution to Freemasonry in general and Mark Masonry in particular has been a major one. He served as Grand Treasurer to the Craft in 1982 and was appointed Junior Grand Warden in 2003. He is Chairman of the governing body of the Masonic School for Girls at Rickmansworth and previously served many years on the Council of what is now the Royal Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys.
     Soon after being appointed Grand Treasurer in 1977, he was instrumental, with others, in establishing the present Mark Masons’ Hall in St. James’s Street, which is one of the finest masonic buildings in the world.
     He leaves office having chaired, as President of the General Board, the committee which had oversight of the tremendously successful 150th anniversary celebrations of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons which culminated in a celebratory meeting in a packed Royal Albert Hall. This was only the second occasion in the history of English Freemasonry where HRH Prince Michael of Kent, the Grand Master of Mark Grand Lodge shared a platform with his blood brother, HRH The Duke of Kent, the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England.

Mark Masons Cementing Ties

An interesting event took place recently at the Saint Ethelbert Lodge of Mark Master Masons, No. 243, at which a large gathering of Brethren from the Mark Province of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire were present. On that occasion, the Deputy Provincial Grand Master for the Craft Province of Herefordshire, the Revd. David John Bowen, was advanced in the Mark Degree.
     Both counties, in both their Craft and Mark Masonry, have always had close ties with the churches. The Cathedrals of Gloucester and Hereford enjoy cordial relations with Freemasonry, and individual Freemasons and lodges of both counties have been engaged over the years in fund-raising activities connected with their dioceses and parishes.
     David Bowen, whose father had been a Mark Mason, said that he had often considered joing Mark Masonry, but that the opportunity had eluded him until now.
     As a Past Grand Chaplain, David Bowen is in a unique position to further cement relations between Mark and Craft, as well as with the churches in his area.