A new facilitator for the “Listening Process” in the Anglican Communion has been appointed by Communion Secretary General, the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon.
The Rev. Canon Philip Groves was announced earlier in the week as the new incumbent of the post, described by the 1998 Lambeth Conference as “a means of monitoring the work done on the subject of human sexuality in the Communion”.
In a letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion Canon Kearon said, "I am pleased that this Listening Process, which has been requested on many occasions, can now begin in earnest. Canon Groves has wide experience and excellent gifts to take this process forward. I am sure he will wish to contact each of you shortly."
The move follows a request by the Primates Meeting at Dromantine, Ireland, in February last year, asking the “Anglican Consultative Council in June 2005 to take positive steps to initiate the listening and study process which has been the subject of resolutions not only at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, but in earlier Conferences as well”.
Canon Groves is currently Team Vicar in Melton Mowbray, Trustee of the Church Mission Society, a Council Member at St John’s College, Nottingham, and Canon of All Saints Cathedral, Mpwapwa, Tanzania.
The father of three will take up the post as facilitator full-time on 1st January 2006 as part of the Anglican Communion Office in Westbourne Park, London.
Elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, last week leaders of the Global South gathered in Egypt. They issued a powerful condemnation of their more liberal counterparts.
