Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu has appealed to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to invite all bishops to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, “even those irregularly consecrated or actively gay.”<\/p>\n
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s plea came in a letter to the present Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, in which he also called on all Anglican bishops to be “more welcoming and inclusive of one another.”<\/p>\n
“Our Communion has always been characterized by its comprehensiveness, its inclusiveness, its catholicity,” he said. “…we are really family, held together not so much by law as by bonds of affection. There is no family that is unanimous on every single subject.”<\/p>\n
The Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican Communion bishops, is due to be held July 16-August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. About 880 invitations have been sent out to serving diocesan, suffragan and assisting bishops.<\/p>\n