Anglican archbishop announces gay stance

— LONDON - Bishop Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world’s estimated 77 million Anglicans, pledged Friday to seek reconciliation in some of the most contentious issues of gender and sexuality that have split the Anglican Communion.

Soon after Prime Minister David Cameron announced his appointment, Welby, a former oil-company executive, made it clear that he endorsed earlier church statements criticizing government plans to legalize same-sex marriage.

“But I also need to listen very attentively to the LGBT communities and examine my own thinking carefully and prayerfully,” he added, using initials that refer to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender categories.

“I am always averse to the language of exclusion,” he said, apparently seeking a middle ground in the debates, which have split Anglicans from Africa to America. “Above all, in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed in honesty and in love.” He said at a news conference, “We must have no truck with any form of homophobia in any part of the church.”

Drawing on a career that has taken him from the executive suites of French and British oil companies to hardscrabble parish churches in the British Midlands and scenes of sectarian strife in Africa and the Middle East, Welby said he would bring a “passion for reconciliation” to his new position.

He replaces the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, who announced in March that he would step down at the end of the year. Within the Church of England, Welby faces dwindling congregations and the same divisions between conservatives and liberals as Anglicans elsewhere.

“It’s exciting, because I believe that we are at one of those rare points, where the tide of events is turning, and the church nationally, including the Church of England, has great opportunities to match its very great, but often hiddenstrengths,” Welby said.

“I feel a massive sense of privilege at being one of those responsible for the leadership of the church, in a time of spiritual hunger, when our network of parishes and churches and schools and above all people means that we are facing the toughest issues in the toughest places,” he said.

Welby, 56, emerged as the favorite to become the 105th archbishop of Canterbury only after tortuous negotiations within the Church of England that had led to frequent reports of deadlock and disagreement among members of the church commission that chose him.

His appointment was likely to be closely watched in the Vatican, where the Roman Catholic hierarchy has sought to lure away Anglican priests who have become disaffected with what they see as a liberalizing trend in the Church of England.

Like Cameron and other members of the British elite, including the royal family, Welby was educated at Eton College. He went on to study law and history at Cambridge University before working for 11 years in the treasury departments of the French Elf Aquitaine oil company and later of a British exploration company, Enterprise Oil.

After his youngest daughter, Johanna, was killed in a car crash in 1983, he said, “It was a very dark time for my wife, Caroline, and myself, but in a strange way it actually brought us closer to God.” They have five other children.

His rise through the church ranks has been widely described as meteoric. He began his training as a priest in 1987 and was made a deacon in 1992. Welby was made bishop of Durham - the fourth-ranking bishopric in the hierarchy - only a year ago.

In an interview published in September in Money Marketing, a British financial newspaper, Welby said he had abandoned the oil industry in favor of the church because “I was unable to get away from a sense of God calling.”

He has a reputation as being self-deprecating. On Friday, he called his appointment “something I never expected.”

Front Section, Pages 3 on 11/10/2012

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