WALES: PROTESTS AS FIRST DIVORCED BISHOP IS CHOSEN

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent

THE TELEGRAPH

7/05/2004

A Church in Wales clergyman has become the first divorced person in Britain to be appointed an Anglican bishop.

The Ven Anthony Crockett, the Archdeacon of Carmarthen, has been named as the next Bishop of Bangor following a protracted and controversial selection process.

The Most Rev Barry Morgan, who succeeded Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Wales, said that the 58-year-old archdeacon was the unanimous choice of the Church's Bench of Bishops.

But a number of clergy in the diocese have expressed anger over the decision, saying that their wishes had been ignored, and the majority of canons at Bangor cathedral have protested to the Archbishop.

For the first time in the Church in Wales's history, an electoral college failed to agree on a candidate by the necessary two-thirds majority when it met behind in March.

The Rev Geraint ap Iorwerth, the rector of Pennal, said: "There will be some who will stay away from his consecration, very definitely."

He said that Mr Crockett's marital history did not concern him personally, but it did worry many people in the diocese.

Archdeacon Crockett, 58, who separated from his first wife in 1985 and remarried in 1999, said he was "shocked and amazed" when he was asked to take up the post.

The Rev David Holloway, a leading evangelical, said the appointment was yet another example of the Church's liberal leadership being out of step with the vast majority of Anglicans across the world.

Mr Holloway, the vicar of Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, said: "To have a divorced and remarried bishop is, sadly, all of a piece with the move away from Biblical norms on sexual morality."

END