The Diocese of York has announced that the Bishop of Selby and the Bishop of Whitby will both retire in July 2024.
The Rt Revd John Thomson, Bishop of Selby, and the Rt Revd Paul Ferguson, Bishop of Whitby, will each have served ten years since their consecration together by the then Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, in York Minster in 2014. Events in July 2024 to mark their retirement will be announced nearer the time.
Am I alone in thinking there have been an awful lot of episcopal retirements and resignations recently? Perhaps someone with a finger on the ecclesiastical pulse could either confirm or refute this impression. It may of course simply be that nowadays here are so many right reverend ladies and gentlemen in our midst, that the numbers currently departing are pretty much the current norm.
These have been announced a year in advance. + Durham’s retirement was announced 7 months in advance.
The problem is, once you announce your retirement you tend to lose authority, as people may just ignore your suggestions as you’ll be gone soon. Doing it far in advance leaves you as a lame duck.
The RC bishop of Hexham and Newcastle was forced to resign recently and a successor installed almost immediately. Why does the CofE take a ridiculous long time to appoint new bishops?
The recent appointment at Hexham and Newcastle was swift precisely because of the very damaging and unusual circumstances under which the previous Bishop left. In the Catholic Church in England and Wales episcopal appointments can often take as long or longer than in the C of E. In the Catholic Diocese of Leeds the last episcopal vacancy was well over two years. In the Catholic Church in Scotland some recent vacancies have been much longer, whilst in the USA some dioceses have been without a diocesan Bishop for a long, long time. The challenge for both the Catholic Church and… Read more »
There will probably be a consecration of two bishops destined for the same diocese. Crockford records that a Bishop of Oxford (Carpenter) and a Suffragan Bishop of Reading (Knell) were consecrated side by side in Southwark Cathedral on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul in 1955. Carpenter’s predecessor Kenneth Kirk had died in the job at age 68. It might have been that Knell had been nominated in Kirk’s time and that Kirk had died before Knell’s consecration could take place. The broadcaster and biographer Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005) was Bishop Carpenter’s son. About twenty years ago I contacted… Read more »