The District Grand Lodge of Jamaica recently opened its doors to family and friends of lodge members as they celebrated Saint Andrew (their patron Saint) at the Freemason Building on Beechwood Avenue in St Andrew.

In a move to demystify Freemasonry in Jamaica, District Grand Master Errol Charles Alberga told the Jamaica Observer that the invitation was a gesture of transparency.

“We are a daughter lodge of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and they have opened Grand Lodge in Edinburgh to the press and so we are following suit. We invited the ladies as well as gentlemen who are not lodge members to share with us on this special day in Scottish Freemasonry,” said Alberga.

Lloyd Barnett, depute district grand master and chairman of the organising committee, said the annual festival is a family event where the wives, partners, children, and friends of Freemasons get to share in the celebrations which took the form of a ceremony and banquet.

In his chairman’s remarks in the event magazine, Barnett said that most people think of Freemasonry as a secret society with powerful men.

“Very few associate an Apostle such as St Andrew as our patron saint. It’s one of the lesser known gems of our organisation,” Barnett explained.

“The theme of the festival, ‘Freemasonry in a changing world’, speaks to our organisation’s efforts to be more open to the public to try to better communicate our tenets.

“Almost everything is on the Internet now, so we might as well promote it. Some people will interpret things differently and we try to explain it,” Alberga said, pointing out that Freemasonry is a system of morality which uses allegory to elucidate principles of goodwill and charity.

The organisation’s charitable works, Alberga explained, is another way in which the lodge has been opening up and contributing to nation-building.

The lodge’s mentorship programme, Men Who Care, for example, has been helping to improve the lives of vulnerable boys since its inception in 2010.

“Right now we are working with the Alpha Institute for Boys where we go and mentor them and we help them with getting instruments for the band and we carry our lawyers and other professionals to talk with them on topics such as personal hygiene, the military as a career and the dangers of drug usage,” Alberga said.

“We have some boys who are in the primary schools and the programme has helped them to better communicate and speak up and their teachers are surprised at how well they have improved,” he added.

Cultural items of poetry, music and song were added features of the evening’s ceremony which saw Jamaican dub poet and actress Deon Silvera delivering a rendition of Miss Lou’s Uriah Preach. The Rukumbine Mento Band entertained the audience with traditional Mento songs.

Guest speaker Dr Patricia Dunwell, custos rotulorum of St Andrew, in her address said she connected Freemasonry with a call to serve mankind in much the same way St Andrew served the church.