THE westward procession at the end of the eucharist in York Minster on Sunday was delayed by the Archbishop of York for an unusual announcement.

“Dear sisters and brothers, that was good,” he said, referring to the service, attended by many, perhaps most, of the General Synod members, together with the normal Minster congregation.

Less good, it seems, was the reception given to his presidential address to the Synod on Friday, and he said that he wished to clarify a remark he had made, in the light of “mischievous misconstruing in the press”.

Several newspapers had run stories focusing on an aside that he had made about the opening of the Lord’s Prayer. Archbishop Stephen Cottrell had said in his address: “I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life.”

On Sunday, he said by way of clarification: “I do believe when we pray we should be sensitive about the words we use”; but he was “not ashamed” to use the traditional words.

Archbishop Cottrell presided at the service, and the preacher was the Primate of West Africa, the Most Revd Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, who described the Church as “the great gathering of God’s people who are called to be one people, with one faith, one Lord, one baptism”.

He said that, as an observer to the Synod, he had picked up up that there was a “perceived lack of trust in the Church. . .

“This is, I can assure you, a worldwide phenomenon,” he said, and told a story from his childhood of struggling to trust his siblings after they tricked him at mealtimes and pinched his food. But, he said, Christians had “no reason to doubt Christ”, and instead should lean, and cast their burden, on him.

During the prayers, the Dean of York, the Very Revd Dominic Barrington, asked those gathered to pray for Archbishop Welby and his family. On Saturday afternoon, it was announced that Archbishop Welby had left the Synod to be with his mother, who is seriously ill.

There were several members of Christian Climate Action among the congregation in the Minster, dressed all in black, but none disturbed the service. Before it began, however, six of them conducted a “die-in”, lying in front of the Minster, to symbolise the lives already being lost around the world because of climate-related disasters.

They had hoped to be present on the York University campus for an Oxford diocesan-synod motion, which had been scheduled for Sunday afternoon, but, in the event, it was debated on Tuesday morning.

Among a raft of provisions aimed at accelerating the transition to net zero and embedding a climate-conscious culture in the Church, the motion called on bishops and the Liturgical Committee to encourage the use of an additional question in the confirmation service: “Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth?”

Such words have already been used in some confirmation services in Oxford and Norwich dioceses.

During the debate, Dr Ros Clarke (Lichfield) moved an amendment for this clause to be removed, arguing that it would exclude from the Church those who, for whatever reason, did not wish to make this promise.

The amendment fell in a counted vote, failing to receive a majority in any of the three Houses, though it received significant support in the House of Laity, which voted 78 to 68 against it, with 16 recorded abstentions.

A further amendment urged dioceses to commit funds for improving the carbon footprint of vicarages at a financial level that mirrored the £10 million committed for that purpose in the diocese of Oxford.

This amendment was passed by an even narrower margin: by 139-124, with 25 recorded abstentions.

Responding to the debate, the Bishop of Reading, the Rt Revd Olivia Graham, who had proposed the motion, said: “We cannot invent or spend our way out of this crisis: it going to need us to change.”

She concluded: “We must all wake up, and we must all change: we must pray, we must act, we must lobby, and we must influence in every single context in which we are able to do this.”