(Reuters) Anglican church chooses new leader to weather storms

“It’d be hard to find somebody more unifying than Rowan Williams, and yet he hasn’t managed to hold it together,” Paul Handley, editor of the Church Times newspaper, told Reuters.

“Under him, there have been two significant changes: one is the growth of secularism … and the other is greater division in the church over issues like women bishops, women priests and gay weddings.”

The arcane process of selecting the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury is wrapped in layers of protocol perhaps unsurprising for a role with roots going back 1,400 years.

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