The Rt Revd Richard Holloway writes:

IN AN article he wrote for the Church Times in 2010 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, Canon Barney Milligan, who has died, aged 92, pointed out that the driving force behind that historic declaration had been the desire to reconcile those who had been enemies for centuries and had turned Europe into a battlefield in which millions had been slaughtered and many ancient cultures had been shattered. A believer in the moral and political necessity of the European Union, Canon Milligan described its formation as an attempt “to heal the wounds of the Reformation”.

His understanding of history had taught him that warring religions had been the main cause of Europe’s ancient trauma; so the work of religious reconciliation would have to be an essential part of its healing. This conviction was shared by the founders of the new European institutions themselves, which is why they had enshrined consultation with faith communities in their constitution, an initiative described by Milligan as “a remarkable feature of a political structure in a secular age”.

It was Milligan’s ability to take the long view of human conflict, and the patient effort required to heal it, that led him to his own work in Europe as Anglican Chaplain in Strasbourg from 1986 to 1995, and as Anglican Representative to the European Institutions from 1990 to 1995. But it was an interest that had characterised every phase of his ministry.

In 1971, three years before the UK had become a member, he had toured the six countries of what was then known as the Common Market to inform himself about its relationship with the Churches and the part that they were playing in its emergence, an interest that continued during his years as a Residentiary Canon at St Albans Cathedral in the 1980s.

At St Albans, he launched the Christian Study Centre, with an emphasis on international relations between Churches and political communities. So it was an entirely appropriate evolution that led him to conclude his years of ministry and reconciliation in Strasbourg, where he served both as Anglican Chaplain and as European Ecumenical Commissioner to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.

William John Milligan (known as Barney) was born in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire to Constance (née Hall) and Hubert Milligan. The family moved to Aberdeen in 1933, when his father was appointed assistant radiologist to the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital. After attendance at the Leys School, which had relocated from Cambridge to Pitlochry for the duration of the war, in 1946 Milligan went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read history.

After two years at Cuddesdon Theological College, he was ordained in 1955 to a curacy at St Mark’s, Portsea, moving to the diocese of Southwark to become Vicar of All Saints’, New Eltham, in 1962. This was followed by eight years as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Roehampton, before Robert Runcie appointed him to his residentiary canonry at St Albans in 1979, where he stayed till his move to Strasbourg in 1986. He was awarded the OBE on his retirement in 1995, when he moved with his wife, Evie, to Beaminster in Dorset.

Barney Milligan was a man of enormous sympathy and charisma, but beneath the charm and the laughter there lay a determined and serious personality, fully committed to what he believed was the greatest moral purpose of the 20th century: the healing of the ancient wounds of Christian Europe through the development of institutions that would bring unity where once there had been division, and peace where once there had been endless conflict.

He is survived by his Evie, and their three daughters, Lucy, Kate, Becky, and five grandchildren, Rosie, William, Rachel, Daisy, and Lottie.