The Rt. Rev. Royal U. Grote, Jr., has been elected Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Anglican Church in North America. On 11 June 2014 at the 54th General Council meeting of the REC held in Blue Bell, Penna., Grote was elected to succeed the Most Rev. Leonard Riches as the church’s senior bishop.

Born in 1946, Bishop Grote was reared in the Philadelphia-area and was trained for the ministry at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary. Ordained deacon and priest, in 1976 he became the Rector of St. Philip’s Reformed Episcopal Church, in Warminster, Penna., and was called to St. Luke’s Reformed Episcopal Church in New Providence, NJ in 1978.

In 1984, he was elected Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and in 1991 he was translated as bishop of the Special Jurisdiction of North America by the General Council to oversee the planting of congregations in the Central and Western American states. In 1996 he was translated to the new Diocese of Mid-America based in Texas.

A one-time lecturer at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary, Bishop Grote is lecturer in Dogmatic Theology at Cranmer Theological House in Houston, where he also serves as chancellor.