This year on White Sunday, 16 April, the installation service of minister Sandra Rozenberga-Saavedra took place in Santiago, in the Trinity congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile. On 23 September 2022, the council of the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran congregation of Chile invited her to take on the spiritual leadership of the congregation.
The installation service was led by the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile, Izani Bruch. The service was attended by the congregation’s emerita minister Gloria Rojas (the first ordained woman minister in Chile), as well as sisters and brothers in office from other Lutheran congregations in Chile, who laid their hands on her and, referring to various passages of Scripture, prayed for her. The congregation’s chairman Cristián Tello read out and solemnly handed over to the bishop the congregation’s decision regarding the calling of minister Sandra to the Trinity congregation. The service concluded with everyone singing together the Spanish version of “Lead Me, Lord”. The service was followed by warm Christian fellowship in the church garden.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile has also entrusted minister Sandra Rozenberga-Saavedra with the spiritual leadership of the women’s and diversity ministries.
Sandra was born and raised in Latvia, in the Bauska area, and studied theology at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia, where in 1994 she obtained a bachelor’s degree in theology. She has been active in congregational life since 1989, founding and leading the Sunday school of the Bauska Holy Spirit Evangelical Lutheran church, and later becoming the coordinator of the Sunday schools of the LELB Bauska district. By appointment of Archbishop Kārlis Gailītis, she served in the Jaunjelgava Mārtiņš White and Daudzese congregations as acting minister from 1992 to 1995. She was ordained to the office of minister in the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church Abroad (now LELBP) on 29 October 1995 in the Resurrection congregation in Caracas, Venezuela, where she served until 1997. To this day, Sandra has maintained close contact with many of her students and members of her former congregations in Latvia and elsewhere in the world.
In Latvia, from 1992 to 1995, Sandra also worked in the field of Christian journalism, writing weekly columns for the daily newspaper „Labrīt” and hosting the weekly programme Aperto Libro on Latvian Christian Radio. Since 2021, as a freelance journalist, she has prepared publications for the Latviesi.com portal of the association. Sandra is one of the founders of LLSTA.
Sandra also studied international relations at the Andrés Bello Diplomatic Academy of Chile and, from 1998 to 2001, worked in the diplomatic service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia. Since 2013, on a voluntary basis (ad honorem) she has been the representative of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Chile.
In 2001, Sandra moved permanently to Chile, where, together with her husband Ernesto, she was engaged in business. In this field, Sandra gained her knowledge at the Faculty of Business, Management and Economics of the University of Latvia, as well as studying electronic commerce at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso in Chile.
The origins of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (IELCH) can be traced to the 1860s, when German Lutheran immigrants colonised the southern part of the country. In Chile, the formation of churches other than the Roman Catholic Church was not permitted before 1925, when the separation of church and state was incorporated into the constitution. The Lutheran churches formed an association, which resulted in the establishment of the Evangelical German Church in Chile at the end of the 1930s. The name was changed to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1959. In the 1960s, in the process of “Chileanisation” and the formation of new congregations, the IELCH began to preach in Spanish. The Church committed itself to working among the marginalised and economically oppressed strata of society. After the 1973 coup, the Church’s leadership, its ministers and lay members became involved in the field of human rights protection. As a result, the large German-speaking congregations, which supported the military government, withdrew from the IELCH and formed the Lutheran Church in Chile (ILCH). Today, dialogue and cooperation between the two churches takes place in the Council of Lutheran Churches of Chile. The IELCH continues to minister among the poor and oppressed strata of the population. The Church is actively involved in interreligious dialogue in Chile. The IELCH is a member of the Lutheran World Federation, the World Council of Churches and the Latin American Council of Churches.
The origins of the Evangelical Lutheran Trinity congregation of Chile, in turn, can be traced to the establishment and construction of the Christuskirche (Church of Christ, in German), which was financed by the German-speaking Lutheran community of Santiago. The church building was inaugurated on 19 April 1959. Thus, in the early 1960s, the first Lutherans living in Ñuñoa, Macul, La Reina and the surroundings of these districts began to organise and formed an independent congregation. The Trinity congregation was officially founded in 1969 as a Lutheran congregation, and three years later it obtained legal status under Chilean law. During the split of the Lutheran church in Chile, which formally took place in 1975, the Trinity congregation decided to remain in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (IELCH).
