The Bishop of New Westminster, Melissa Skelton, was elected archbishop and metropolitan in the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and Yukon. On taking up her new office, Skelton will still continue to be the Bishop of New Westminster. She is the first woman to be elected archbishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, and the second woman archbishop in the entire Anglican Communion. Earlier this year, Bishop Kay Goldsworthy was elected Archbishop of Perth in the Anglican Church of Australia. Archbishops Melissa and Kay are responsible for internal provinces, and they are not national archbishops.
There has been a woman archbishop in the Anglican Communion: Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori became the first – and so far only – woman in the office of a national archbishop in 2006, when she was elected presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church in the USA. She held this office until 2015, when her term came to an end. Archbishop Melissa Skelton, for her part, became a diocesan bishop in March 2014 at the Vancouver Convention Centre and Christ Church Cathedral.
The ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and Yukon is one of the four provinces that make up the Anglican Church of Canada. In her new office, the archbishop will oversee six dioceses: Yukon, Caledonia in the northern part of British Columbia, the Territory of the People in central British Columbia (formerly the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior, and earlier still Cariboo), Kootenay in the eastern part of British Columbia, including the Okanagan, the British Columbia diocese of the Vancouver Island and the coastal islands, as well as her own diocese in New Westminster and the Fraser Valley, including the Sunshine Coast, from Powell River to Hope Island.
Melissa Skelton was elected on the first ballot, when 21 of the 24 members of the Provincial College of Electors gathered for a telephone conference and electronic voting.
“This vote was historic not only because the first woman was elected archbishop; this was also the first vote that took place with the help of electronic means,” said the diocesan official.
The new archbishop will replace Archbishop John Privett, who ended his term as metropolitan at the end of April this year and who will end his term as bishop in Kootenay at the end of May.
“I am thrilled and deeply grateful for the support of so many people in this process: the Provincial College of Bishops, the executive members of the Council, and all those who worked diligently to create the electronic/telephone election procedure that we used today,” said Archbishop Melissa. “To be the successor of Archbishop John Privett is a humbling task. My hope and my conviction is that we have drawn closer to a time of greater cooperation and to the purpose of our province’s existence, which we will continue to build on the good works of Archbishop Privett that he has carried out over the past nine years.
“Speaking of myself as the first woman metropolitan in the Anglican Church of Canada, I can only say: thank God for this privilege.”
The new archbishop takes up office immediately and will be formally consecrated to it at the Synod of the province in Sorrento, British Columbia, in September.
Source: Anglican News
Photo: (Archbishop Melissa Skelton) All photos: Diocese of New Westminster