Mississauga
Archbishop Anne Germond, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Ontario and soon-to-be acting primate of the Anglican Church of Canada told the Council of General Synod (CoGS), meeting May 31-June 2 in Mississauga, Ont., that she saw herself purely as a transitional leader between the church’s 14th primate, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, and whoever might be elected its 15th at General Synod in June 2025. As such, she subsequently told the Anglican Journal, she intends to pay close attention to the work of CoGS and national church leaders, but not involve herself in any decisions until she officially steps into the interim primacy role upon Nicholls’ retirement in September. She sees her role at that point, she said, as simply facilitating the work CoGS will have already begun so it can continue with as little interruption as possible.
Germond is the Anglican Church of Canada’s senior metropolitan by election, according to General Synod Chancellor Clare Burns. As such she will take on the role of acting primate Sept. 15, on Nicholls’ retirement.
Germond is also bishop of the dioceses of Algoma and Moosonee, and will continue in those roles. She said she had been talking with retired bishops to see if they would be able to help her lead these dioceses so that she would be better able to take on the role of acting primate.
Earlier in the weekend at CoGS, Nicholls had charged the council with organizing its work on brainstorming solutions and restructuring to respond to the church’s ongoing decline in revenue. The council is expected to work on these ideas between now and its next meeting November, at which point the national office will be finalizing a draft budget for the year 2025. In order to meet that deadline, Nicholls said, CoGS will need to begin its work on considering how to either increase General Synod’s revenue or decrease its expenses now. This work will therefore have been underway for several months by the time Germond becomes acting primate in September.
Germond told the Journal she would remain on the sidelines to allow Nicholls to fully play her own role in that process to the completion of her time in office.
“I’m being very intentional not to step into that role. There is a primate. The primate stays in place until she retires,” she said. She had been invited to this spring’s CoGS meeting so she would be familiar with that work and therefore prepared to help lead it when her time came, she said.
“I think that for me to speak, to say anything too much, would be really to speak out of turn right now,” she said. “And so I just won’t do it. But if and when the time comes, there’ll be things to say, no doubt.”
