Anglican leaders in Ripon and Leeds have approved plans for a new larger diocese.
The Church of England Dioceses Commission is proposing to abolish the dioceses of Bradford, Wakefield and Ripon and Leeds.
A new single diocese of Leeds, serving West Yorkshire and large parts of North Yorkshire, would be created instead.
When the Roman Catholic hierarchy was restored in the UK an act of parliament forbade Catholics from taking the name of Church of England dioceses. Alas, the courtesy does not extend both ways. Despite Catholic dioceses never replicating Anglican names, in recent years the Church of England has shown a distressing tendency to take on the same name as Catholic dioceses. Part of the problem for the Church of England is that when new dioceses were established to serve urban areas they often took as their see cities more pleasant, leafy places nearby. Thus for example in the East Midlands the diocese of Southwell rather than Nottingham; in heavily industrialised West Yorkshire, the diocese of Ripon rather than the diocese of Leeds. Meanwhile the Catholic Church established bishops of Leeds and of Nottingham. In recent years the Church of England has added those names to its own sees (thus diocese of Ripon and Leeds, etc) in an attempt to rectify this Roman monopoly of the name. In another example, the Catholic Church established a diocese of Portsmouth and another of Southwark – and lo, the Church of England then did the same. All this me-tooism is a little surprising. Oh well, I suppose the good news is that usually the bishops of these places get on well together.