House of Bishops to appoint next bishop of the Diocese of Christ the King
The electoral synod of the Diocese of Christ the King of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa has failed to elect a successor to its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Peter Lee. Under the ACSA’s canons the choice of bishop for the diocese which stretches from the suburbs of Johannesburg to the suburbs of Pretoria now falls to the church’s House of Bishops. In his 19 June 2016 farewell address to the diocese, Bishop Lee, who came to South Africa from Ireland said:”The matter is now entirely out of our hands. I have been in touch with the Archbishop who is trying to make space for the Bishops to make the election in September so we have our bishop in the new year; if that is not possible they will attend to it in February and we should have our bishop in about a year’s time. The Bishops now make this decision and our role is to offer respect and obedience to whoever is sent to us by them.” Bishop Lee remarked on the tremendous changes South Africa had seen since he took office as bishop. “We should remember today what it was like in this country when we began in 1990. F W de Klerk had just unbanned the ANC and the PAC and Nelson Mandela had only just been released from prison.” He added that it was “wonderful to think how God prepares us. My parents emigrated from the north of Ireland when I was 3 years old because that was no place to bring up their little boy; in fact the church where I was baptised was bombed to the ground by the IRA. I don’t think anyone told them what was going to happen! When I was just 12 years old my father came home with a newspaper with a photograph on the front of people running and falling in the dust and the smoke, with a one-word headline: SHARPEVILLE. I knew nothing of Sharpeville or of South Africa but that moment lodged in my memory and came back to me when I was about to be installed there at St Cyprian’s as the first bishop of this diocese. I have felt deeply privileged many times in this ministry but never more so than standing behind the altar in that church with a huge crowd of God’s people bopping about in worship and singing their hearts out to God.” he wrote.
