09-05-2025
The Pope was chosen in two weeks. Why is the C of E taking a year to replace Welby?
The verdict, decided in secret by an all-powerful, all-male clique, is announced to the Church's 1.4 billion followers quickly and decisively.
Compare this to the Church of England – with some one million regular worshippers and an average of 700,000 who attend weekly Sunday services – whose process for choosing a successor would, if it was dramatised, be more like a 16-part re-run of Crossroads, buried deep in the early afternoon schedules.
In fact, it's worse than that. The route towards the final Confirmation of Election ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral is a dirge of a process that would bore even a professional observer of the drying of paint.
And it exemplifies so much that is wrong with how our nation is administered, in all its plodding mediocrity. It is the telephone queue to speak to a GP on a Monday morning, the long, painful wait for planning consent – but adorned with vestments and incense.
Now, please steel yourself, because this isn't easy. You might need a drink before I take you through the procedure and you'll definitely be needing one by the end of it. Indeed, by the end of the actual process this nation, those of us still alive, will definitely have earned a stiff one.
As with any tweak to a public body in this country, it starts with a consultation. Thus 11,000 people, between February and March, were consulted. There were emails and letters, online forms completed, children and young people called in and then the Archbishops' and Prime Minister's appointment secretaries met over 350 individuals. They spoke with parliamentarians, leaders in public life, representatives from other Christian traditions and those of non-Christian traditions.
That's right, people of no faith and 12-year-olds had their views canvassed. As for all the other people with enough time on their hands to fill in Church of England consultation forms… well, that's a great deal of coffee and biscuits. I dread to think of the drag and cost to the National Grid that was involved merely to boil the kettle so that all and sundry could weigh in on the subject.
Once these hundreds of thousands of transcribed conversations were garnered to, in the words of The Church of England, help 'discern the gifts, skills and qualities required in the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury to meet the needs of the Church today and in the years to come', various emerging themes were collated.
This document – let us pray that there is an executive summary – will sit alongside a 'Statement of Needs' produced by the Diocese of Canterbury, as well as other information provided by the National Church and Anglican Communion, info that is then submitted to the Canterbury Crown Nominations Commission. This body, explains the C of E, 'works prayerfully and collaboratively to discern and nominate the next spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion'.
From them a name emerges and the PM submits that name to the King, who assents to that election (sometime later this year).
So that's over a year of faff, months of directionless drift, as congregations dwindle.
To deliver us from a morass of sluggish embarrassment, the C of E needs to go full conclave, with electors locked in Lambeth Palace as soon as the archbishopric falls vacant, and an agreement to send up white smoke within 48 hours: ' Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Archbishop!'
