Suliasi Kurulo

Suliasi Kurulo (born 1958) is a Fijian Pentecostal minister and evangelist. He is President of the Christian Mission Fellowship (CMF), an international denomination based in Fiji, and is involved with the World Harvest Centre at Newtown, Trinity Television, Christian Radio Station FM97, and the World Harvest Bible College in Labasa. He oversees missionaries in such places as the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Cambodia, and other Pacific Islands nations.

Kurulo is a friend of international evangelists Reinhard Bonnke, Luis Palau and Benny Hinn, and was praised by the late Christian Men's Network founder and author Edwin Louis Cole.

Education and career

He was born to a Methodist family in 1958 in the village of Navatu, in Bua Province. He was educated initially at Vuya District School, but went to live with an uncle in Toorak, Suva, in 1966 in order to further his education, enrolling in Suva Methodist Primary School. After returning to his village for family reasons, he subsequently boarded at Ratu Kadavulevu School and went on to the Fiji Institute of Technology (FIT), where he studied building and civil engineering before switching to a new course called "Multi-Craft." After graduating from the course, he taught at Bua Secondary School. He returned to FIT in 1978-1979 to complete his building and civil engineering diploma, and subsequently became a cabinet maker.

He started full-time missionary work in 1984. He earned a Bachelor's degree in theology in 1991 and Masters degree in 1993, both from New Covenant International (a Christian university for pastors) in the United States. He claims that the CMF now has 6000 members in Fiji (half of them in Suva) and almost 20,000 internationally. He has appeared on the Christian TBN channel in the United States and won the World Pastors Prestigious Award 2005 in January 2006; only one of two annual recipients is allowed to be from outside the United States.

Personal life

He married Mere Dinaulu, a Labasa nurse, at the end of 1983. They have three sons, Josaia (a pilot), Apisalome, and Jone, and one daughter, Francis.

2006 coup

Kurulo condemned the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase by the Republic of Fiji Military Forces on 5 December 2006. The Fiji Times quoted him on 8 December as calling the coup "the manifestation of darkness and evil." He was also vocal in condemning the detention and alleged physical mistreatment of six pro-democracy activists by the Military in the early hours of Christmas morning, with the Fiji Sun quoting him on 26 December as saying that the Military should be ashamed of themselves.

Kurulo made a blistering attack on President Ratu Josefa Iloilo on 4 January 2007, after Iloilo made a broadcast endorsing the coup and the process that followed. [http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=54617] Iloilo was "a puppet of the Military," the Fiji Times quoted him as saying. He went on to say that the president's address "made a mockery of our culture, government and our beloved nation Fiji" and that "To say that he would have done exactly the same thing is a crying shame."

ources

* [http://www.fijitimes.com Fiji Times] , 26 February 2006