Press release from Number 10. There are more details on the Leicester diocesan website.
Suffragan Bishop of Loughborough: 12 November 2021
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Malayil Lukose Varghese Muthalaly to the Suffragan See of Loughborough.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 12 November 2021
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Malayil Lukose Varghese Muthalaly (known as Saju), Vicar of St Mark’s Gillingham, in the Diocese of Rochester, to the Suffragan See of Loughborough, in the Diocese of Leicester, in succession to The Right Reverend Dr Gulnar Francis-Dehqani following her translation to the See of Chelmsford.
Background
Saju grew up in the Syrian Orthodox Church in South India. He was educated at the Southern Asia Bible College in Bangalore and trained for ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He served his title at St Thomas’, Lancaster in the Diocese of Blackburn and was ordained Priest in 2009.
Saju was appointed Associate Vicar at St Thomas’, Kendal and St Catherine’s, Crook in the Diocese of Carlisle in 2011. He has served at St Mark’s, Gillingham and St Mary’s Island in the Diocese of Rochester since 2015 initially as Priest-in-Charge, before being appointed Vicar in 2019.
Wishing Bishop Saju, and his family, well. Regarding ‘process’ however I confess to being disappointed, though not surprised to see nothing on the Dioceses Commission website. Indeed the latest ‘news’ I could see there was the Dioceses Commission Annual Report, signed [On behalf of the Commission] PAUL BENFIELD (Acting Chair) 16 March 2020 AIUI the current Chair, Dame Caroline Spelman was appointed in April 2021 for a term expiring on 30 April 2022. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/GS%202201%20Appointment%20of%20Chair%20of%20Dio%20Com.pdf I was picturing a busy time for the Commission in reviewing (and reducing?) the number and roles of Suffragan Bishops, including its input to the Governance… Read more »
It’s good to see a bishop appointed from among the ranks of parish priests, though he will presumably have had to voice support for the apparent diminution of parish ministry now underway in the Leicester diocese. However, there seem to me to be two questions to ponder here: should suffragan sees be filled at a time when clergy recruitment is frozen across so much of the country, and, more specifically, does the diocese of Leicester need a suffragan at all?
While we wish the Bishop well in their new appointment, at a time of severe financial difficulty in many Diocese around funding clergy stipends, is there not a case for freezing vacant Bishops posts until we stabilise the Diocesan budgets?