WALES: WANTED: BISHOP TO SPEAK WELSH TO HIS FLOCK

By Ruth Gledhill Religion Correspondent THE TIMES 3/19/2004

VACANT: one see with large house, £30,000 stipend, 70 priests, 7,000 souls and thousands more sheep. Must be able to speak Welsh. Hoffwch chi fod yn Esgob Bangor?

For the first time in its history, the oldest diocese in the country has failed to elect a bishop. After a three-day conclave, the electoral college of the Church in Wales last night failed to reach a decision over who should succeed the Right Rev Saunders Davies as Bishop of Bangor.

Bangor, the oldest continuous see in Britain, founded more than 1,450 years ago, could now be without a bishop for months or even years while the five other diocesan bishops decide what to do.

Insiders were last night speculating that the diocese could even be merged with neighbouring St Asaph, placing its 70 parishes in the care of the Right Rev John Davies.

The electoral college, made up of representatives from Bangor and the wider church, had to find a two-thirds majority for a new bishop within three days at their meeting this week at St Deiniol's Cathedral, Bangor.

No electoral college meeting has taken longer than two days since the disestablishment and separation of the Church in Wales from the Church of England in 1920. The college has never before failed to reach a decision, which has resulted in the referral of the vacancy to the bench of bishops.

The difficulties at Bangor are symptomatic of the problems facing the Anglican church throughout Britain. At the root of the problem is the declining number of priests and worshippers. As fewer high-calibre graduates experience a vocation to the ordained ministry, the number of clergy suitable for elevation to the episcopacy is diminishing fast.