NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Episcopal Bishop Charles Jenkins is in South Africa to see whether that country’s experience with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission can be a model for New Orleans’ post-Katrina racial reconciliation.

Last year, Jenkins brought Anglican Bishop Johannes Seoka of Pretoria, with his wife, Timeya, to New Orleans to publicly discuss the commission’s work for an audience of invited interfaith clergy.

In addition, Jenkins has privately sounded out religious and other leaders on whether a similar process might work in New Orleans, but has received a cool response.

Now, Jenkins said he will meet Seoka in South Africa, talking with him and others who were directly involved in the commission.

Operating between 1995 and 1999, the commission enabled victims of official apartheid-era violence to tell their stories of torture and imprisonment. In many cases, it granted amnesty to responsible officials, so long as they appeared before the commission and were fully forthcoming, Seoka said.

Since Hurricane Katrina, which he has said shook him deeply, Jenkins has tried to reorient the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana more explicitly toward achieving racial justice.

Jenkins, who will retire at the end of this year, said he hopes to take six months off next year. If his successor permits, Jenkins said he hopes to pursue racial reconciliation in some context, perhaps with youths.

“They don’t have the historical perspective we have. But they are not as afraid of it, either,” he said.