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UK news in brief

by
21 April 2017

DIOCESE OF GLOUCESTER

Bishop Michael Perham dies

A FORMER Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Michael Perham (above), died on Monday, the diocese announced this week. Bishop Perham had been suffer­ing from cancer. He was 69. He died peacefully at home. Obituary to follow

 

Kirk publishes sexuality report

THE Church of Scotland’s Theological Forum has published a report on hu­­man sexuality three days early, after its contents were leaked to the na­­tional press this week. It is to be considered by commissioners of the Gen­eral As­­sembly, which is to meet in Edinburgh next month. Its publication is al­­most a year after commissioners voted by 339 votes to 215 to allow clerics in a same-sex civil marriage to continue to serve. The report authorises the Legal Questions Committee to study the legal implica­tions of conducting same-sex marriages in church, and report to the Gen­eral Assembly in 2018.

 

New Dean of Jersey appointed

THE Vice Dean of Guernsey and Rector of St Martin’s, Guernsey, the Revd Mike Keirle, will be the next Dean of Jersey, the diocese of Canterbury an­­nounced on Tuesday. He will succeed the Very Revd Bob Key, who resigned last year. Mr Keirle also was acting Dean during a vacancy in 2015.

 

Church wedding solemnised on Good Friday

NATALIA MORGAN and Geraint Dean were married in St Augustine’s, Pontllanfraith, in Wales, on Good Friday. The South Wales Argus reported the bride as saying that she could not understand ob­­jections to marrying on that day, because it was an uplifting occasion. It was also her sister’s birth­day. A spokeswoman for the Church in Wales said that it was “very unusual, al­­though not forbidden, to celebrate weddings in church on that day”.

 

Bristol memorial to 13th-century friars demolished

MEMORIAL PAVING commemorating 13th-century Franciscans on the site of their friary, outside an office building in Bristol, has been destroyed by developers. Tim Stanley, a PR consultant, wrote a short history of the site for a property surveyor, Robert Acreman, 30 years ago. This was cast in br­ass letters, set in a stone, and later unveiled by two Brothers from the An­­glican Society of St Francis at Hilfield Friary in Dorset. The contractors later said that they had been given no instruction to preserve the memorial.

 

Corrections. The report “New allegations tell of savagery of Smyth beatings” (News, 13 April) contained inaccuracies: John Smyth did not run the Iwerne Christian camps, as stated, but was Chairman of the Iwerne Trust; and there have been no allegations that abuse took place at the camps themselves. In a brief news item last week, the Vice-President of the Methodist Conference, Rachel Lampard, was incorrectly identified as Richard Lampard. The photo of Salisbury Cathedral Choir (Focus, 13 April) was taken in Stanford Memorial Church, not Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. We apologise for these errors.

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