\u201cAt my age, [Armagh] didn\u2019t seem an obvious career opportunity\u201d\u009d he chuckles, and one is left with the impression that having lost Linda, his wife, and mother of their two grown-up children, after a long illness in 2009, he would have remained content in Meath and Kildare until perhaps retiring in his late sixties.<\/p>\n
He would have been expected to maintain his sustained ecumenical outreach and perhaps to have increasingly indulged his love for writing about theology and history, having written three books already, including A Whisper of God (Columba 2006).<\/p>\n
But now, health permitting, he can remain in the top post in the Church of Ireland until he is 75. While there is little time for writing and scholarship, there are even greater opportunities for ecumenical endeavour for a Church leader who trained as an historian at Trinity College Dublin and as a theologian at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n
His role involves doing three jobs: being diocesan bishop in Armagh where he doesn\u2019t have an assistant bishop, being a national Church leader\/Primate of All-Ireland and being an Anglican bigwig, one of 38 Primates in the worldwide Anglican Communion.<\/p>\n