Church of Ireland gets new primate

The Most Rev. Dr. Richard Clarke, bishop of Meath and Kildare, has been elected archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland by the Church of Ireland’s house of bishops. He succeeds Archbishop Alan Harper, who retired on Sept. 30.

Making the announcement in St. Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, the archbishop designate pledged to give his new duties “the very best of which I am capable.”

Thanking his friends In Meath and Kildare for their 16 years of support, Clarke, 63, said, “I look forward to fresh challenges and joys, along with new friendships and discoveries, in the phase of ministry in the gospel that now lies ahead, both in the diocese of Armagh and within the wider fellowship of the Church of Ireland and beyond.”

One of the main challenges confronting him and the church’s 480,000 members will be secularism. “That to me is the danger, to think that religious faith is an add-on and the normal default is to be without faith,” he said.

Clarke’s primacy takes effect on Dec. 15, the date of his translation and enthronement in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh.

The archbishop designate, a widowed father of two, will be the 105th prelate in the succession of abbots, bishops and archbishops of Armagh since St. Patrick.