Anglican breakaway archbishop John Hepworth has been removed from his post as the global primate of the church at a meeting of bishops in South Africa.
Archbishop Hepworth, the Australian leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion, last year claimed he was raped by three Catholic priests nearly 40 years ago.
He had planned to step down at Easter after bishops in several countries lost confidence in him and opposed his attempts to reunite with Rome.
This is far more important than the headline suggests. It is reporting that the TAC, which essentially appealed to Rome for some sort of accommodation by which they could enter communion, has decided not to follow through with their plan to become Catholics. This is an extremely dramatic reversal.
True, although I understand some members of the TAC are moving to Rome, and possibly some congregations, but not the whole body of the TAC.
Its always intrigued me that the TAC should have an Australian as global primate. This is a huge country and even we residents can’t know everything that’s going on. But my impression is that TAC only has about a dozen congregations here, mostly very small.
++Hepworth used to claim that TAC had 400,000 members worldwide, and much doubt has been cast on that figure, but it does seem undeniable that its strong numbers are in Africa and India. So it would be fitting that the global primate is now an Indian.