Archbishop Shane Parker was installed as the 15th primate of the Anglican Church June 29 in a ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ont. Parker was elected June 26 when his name was added to the third ballot after members of General Synod called for additional candidates.
Parker entered the cathedral to the sound of piano, choir and tambourines and the smell of incense, wearing a stole bearing a pattern of Jerusalem crosses. Parker said during a session in which General Synod endorsed a motion supporting people suffering in Gaza that he had texted Bishop Hosam Naoum of the diocese of Jerusalem to inform him he would be wearing the stole at the ceremony. It was a gesture of support for people suffering in Gaza, which is part of the diocese of Jerusalem, said Parker. “Know that it is for you and your people,” he texted Naoum, with Naoum, he said, responding, “Jerusalem loves you and embraces you.”
In a longer address to General Synod before his installation, Parker made reference to an image he had used earlier in the week—removing fiberglass insulation as a metaphor for removing the distance that can grow between people; between us and God; and between us and our truest selves.
“As I was packing to come here, against the advice that I should probably bring a mitre in case the primatial mitre doesn’t fit, I took my mitre out of my pack and said ‘no way,’ ” said Parker, though he was not on the ballot for primate before General Synod began. Later, when he tried on the primatial mitre, he said, he found it barely perched on his head; over the years, other bishops had layered duct tape, napkins and cotton balls into it as padding to tighten the band so it would fit on their heads. And so he had to take matters into his own hands in order to make it fit.
“I found myself pulling out the insulation—the layers and years of padding,” he said. “Finally, I just said, ‘Take it all out,’ because it’s not necessary anymore. In order to fit, it all had to go.”
On that theme, he said, there would be major changes to the church during his primacy, as he promised at his election and in accordance with General Synod’s adoption of the “Pathways” document that calls for transformation in six areas.
“There will be deep changes in our culture, in our structures, in our operations, in the way we behave and how we speak of ourselves and how we speak of our church and how we speak to one another,” he said. He encouraged Synod to courageously live into that change.
The installation service at the cathedral included music and liturgy from Indigenous, European and African tradition, as well as a sermon by Bishop Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassotto, primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil on the qualities of the good shepherd and the need for God’s compassion for the frailties of even the best human pastors.
The service was followed by a closing banquet, at the end of which Bishop Sam Rose of the diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, announced his diocese would be hosting the next General Synod in St. John’s, in 2028.
This article has been corrected with a more accurate description of Archbishop Parker’s Jerusalem stole.
