LONDON: Church of England officials met in secret yesterday to choose the next Archbishop of Canterbury, a centuries-old role with the modern task of preventing 80 million Anglicans worldwide from splitting over gay marriage and women bishops.
The new church leader must reconcile modernists and traditionalists, and stem a long-term decline in church attendance, a difficult juggling act that some see as a poisoned chalice.
Outgoing Archbishop Rowan Williams, 62, a self-confessed “old hairy lefty” who opposed the Iraq war, said his successor as head of the global Anglican Communion will need “the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros”. “It’d be hard to find somebody more unifying than Rowan Williams, and yet he hasn’t managed to hold it together,” Paul Handley, editor of the Church Times newspaper, said.
“Under him, there have been two significant changes: one is the growth of secularism ... and the other is greater division in the church over issues like women bishops, women priests and gay weddings.”
The arcane process of selecting the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury is wrapped in layers of protocol perhaps unsurprising for a role with roots going back 1,400 years.
Meeting for three days behind closed doors at a secret location, a 16-member panel of bishops, church members and lay people will pick a preferred candidate and a reserve choice.
They will give the two names to Prime Minister David Cameron who will forward the name of the preferred candidate to Queen Elizabeth, supreme governor of the Church of England. Once she approves the candidate, Cameron’s Downing Street office will make the announcement next week, possibly yesterday.
Reuters
