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/ 21 November 2005
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, faced the gravest threat to his authority as leader of the worldwide Anglican communion on Wednesday night, as nearly half the church’s presiding archbishops launched an unprecedented attack on his leadership over the issue of gay clergy.
The extraordinary scenes in Rome after the death of Pope John Paul II disguised the problems that his successor, Joseph Ratzinger — now Benedict XVI, the sixth German pontiff — will face in becoming the spiritual leader of one-sixth of the world’s population: 1,1-billion people. The wave of affection shown for the old pope a fortnight ago was a message the cardinals may have misunderstood.
As hopes that the next pope will come from Africa were increasingly dismissed as unlikely last week, and Nigeria’s Cardinal Francis Arinze was criticised as not being a strong enough contender, a dark-horse candidate, capable of bridging the divide between the Europeans and the Latin American Roman Catholic cardinals, appeared to be emerging in the shape of the Patriarch of Portugal, Jose da Cruz Policarpo.
An African bishop has announced that he will not accept more than 000 of funding to help Aids victims in his area because it comes from an American diocese that supported the election of a gay bishop two years ago. In a statement released to an American conservative Episcopalian website, Nzerebende announced: ”South Rwenzori diocese upholds the Holy Scriptures as true word of God.”
Jackson Nzerebende Tembo, the Bishop of South Rwenzori in Uganda, has rejected funding from the United States diocese of Central Pennsylvania, saying its clergy and bishop, Michael Creighton, endorsed the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
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/ 24 September 2004
North American bishops will cut off funds from the Anglican Church in Africa if they are disciplined for supporting the election of a gay bishop. This warning is due to be delivered to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by a commission made up of senior churchmen from across the world. The commission has recently completed a year-long deliberation into the church’s future.
The leader of the United States Episcopal Church told Ugandan Anglican bishops on Friday to keep out of its affairs after three Los Angeles parishes decided to ally themselves with an African diocese in the row over homosexual clergy. The parishes, in Newport Beach, Long Beach and North Hollywood, are the first to seek oversight from a bishop overseas.
A funny thing is happening within the Anglican communion. It is threatening to tear itself apart over a handful of people who live in monogamous, stable, long-term, loving relationships and are sufficiently religiously observant to want the church to bless them.
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/ 26 January 2001
Pope John Paul II has named 37 new cardinals in an attempt to sway the choice of his successor.