PRESIDENT Irfaan Ali has paid homage to Rev. Dr Ronald McGarrell, a pastor whose decades of community and interfaith work made him one of Guyana’s most recognised religious voices.

In a tribute to the late pastor posted to Facebook, the President said he was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of a man he described as a “dear and respected friend,” adding that he had always paid close attention to Dr McGarrell’s counsel.

President Ali said Dr McGarrell’s life stood as an example of how religious faith finds its deepest meaning when it is turned into service. Faith, in the pastor’s view, could not stay behind church doors; it had to move into the streets, into the lives of families, and into the spaces within and between Guyana’s communities.

The President said Dr McGarrell treated the pulpit as the beginning of ministry, not its end. Sermons had to become service, belief had to become action, and prayer had to become compassion. This is a philosophy President Ali summed up using the pastor’s own words: faith, he said, “had to acquire feet.”

That conviction, according to the President, carried Dr McGarrell fearlessly into some of the country’s most sensitive conversations on peace, on interfaith co-operation, and on strengthening families and communities.

He was also remembered for working to persuade Guyanese that, despite differences of religion, political affiliation, race and circumstance, they remain part of one human family.

Dr McGarrell was a familiar figure within Guyana’s Inter-Religious Organisation, the umbrella body that brings together leaders from the country’s various faiths to promote religious tolerance and social cohesion.

President Ali said the pastor’s passing calls for reflection as well as sorrow, describing him as a servant whose teachings and example continue to guide the nation.

On behalf of the Government and people of Guyana, the President extended condolences to Dr McGarrell’s family, his church community, his colleagues at the Inter-Religious Organisation, and all those who knew and worked with him.

He closed his tribute with a prayer that Dr McGarrell would rest in “the peace in which he so deeply believed,” and that he would be received into eternal light by the God he had served throughout his ministry.