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  [California Study Center]

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PITCAIRN ISLANDS STUDY CENTER, Pacific Union College, Angwin, California USA.

Herbert Ford, 559-592-0980, 559-732-0313.

FLAME OF WORLD PEACE BROUGHT FROM JERUSALEM TO PITCAIRN

                        ANGWIN (Napa County) Calif., August 5, 1999—A flame of world peace and goodwill, from a flame in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, now burns in the Seventh-day Adventist church on tiny Pitcairn Island, located in the far, uninhabited reaches of the South Pacific Ocean, according to a report reaching the Pitcairn Islands Study Center on the campus of Pacific Union College here (Aug. 5, 1999).

                        The flame was brought to Pitcairn recently by nine visiting yachts of a 50-yacht "Millennium Odyssey" flotilla, which is carrying specially designed lamps containing the flame to 40 countries around the world.

                        At Pitcairn, the "Millennium Flame" was passed to Neville Tosen, pastor of the Adventist church, the only house of worship on Pitcairn, and to Jay Warren, Pitcairn's magistrate, by Jimmy Cornell, publisher of World Cruising magazine, initiator of the millennium event.

                        Cornell explained that the passing of the flame is a "wish to celebrate the coming of the new millennium in a profound and significant way." The last of the lamps will be presented in Rome, Italy, on Easter Sunday, 2000.

                        In 1789, nine sailors who had mutinied against their captain, William Bligh, on board H.M.S. Bounty sailed to uninhabited Pitcairn to escape detection. It was nearly two decades before the outside world discovered their presence on the one-mile-long by two-miles-wide island.

                        Pitcairn is located about midway between Panama and New Zealand.