Bishop Justin Welby, leader of the Diocese of Durham, is the man selected by the Crown Nominations Commission, the Church of England’s 16 member committee which has the task of choosing the current Archbishop Rowan Williams’ successor.
Archbishop Williams will retire in December.
But - SIR Europe reports - the CNC would never manage to agree on the name of a second candidate to send to Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron for definitive approval, hence an official announcement has not been made yet.
Catholic weekly The Tablet has confirmed the rumour published by The Times in recent days. Bishop Welby, a former oil industry executive has allegedly secured two thirds of the Commission’s votes.
The Commission is still undecided on who the second candidate should be and is split between the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, the Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, the Bishop of Coventry, Christopher Cocksworth and the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres.
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press office, the name of the new archbishop whom David Cameron will need to approve should be announced in mid October, but according to The Times the Prime Minister could be forced to intervene, in order to break the Commission’s deadlock over the choice of candidate.
Rowan Williams’ successor has an almighty task ahead of him as the Primate himself put it, as he will have to maintain the unity of the Anglican Communion, overcoming divisions over women priests and gay ordinations.
The head of the Anglican Communion is therefore leaving his post a decade earlier than expected, in order to return to academic life. Sixty two year old Williams, who has been worked hard to soften the repercussions of rifts created in the international Anglican community over the ordination of women and gay bishops, is expected to take up a place in the University of Cambridge’s academic senate.
There has been talk of rifts in the Anglican Church for months. Divisions are essentially being caused by member’s stances over hot topics on the Anglican Communion’s agenda, from the ordination of gay priests, to the blessing of same-sex marriages.
The purest spirit of Anglicanism has, for a while now, contested that new “liberal” line which Williams seems to support. This increasingly difficult situation within the Church led to Williams’ controversial resignation.
The Church of England’s decision to approve the ordination of women priests in 1992 became one of the problems along the road towards complete unity between the two Churches. In 2003, the Anglican bishops of Africa, Asia and Latin America strongly criticised the decision taken by the U.S. Episcopal Church (which is part of the Anglican Communion) to appoint a gay bishop to New Hampshire.
The Episcopal Church in the United States even nominated a woman - Katharine Jefferts Schori, who was Bishop of Nevada until not so long ago - as President for the first time. The appointment of openly gay priests as bishops has been a contentious issue across the world for years.
The consecration of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as Coadjutor Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire (U.S.), risked creating a real schism between Anglicans and Episcopalians. The Welshman Rowan Williams is considered to be one of the most cultured people of our times.
He knows and speaks eight languages. He has a degree in philosophy and theology and has spent a great deal of his life lecturing in two of Britain’s most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge. He has been married to Jane Paul, a theologian and university lecturer, since 1981. The couple has two children.