Bishop Geoffrey Woodcroft discussing discipleship at You Are Leaven, an April 2024 conference on spiritual formation in Mississauga, Ont. Photo: Sean Frankling
This article was updated Oct. 28
Bishop of the diocese of Rupert’s Land Geoffrey Woodcroft has been admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of cancer shortly after announcing his intention to retire in June 2025. The diocese’s executive archdeacon Simon Blaikie told the Anglican Journal Woodcroft made the announcement on the final day of the diocesan synod, Oct. 19, then felt unwell and was in the hospital within 12 hours. He was diagnosed with cancer, said Blaikie, and has gone on sick leave, expecting to transition directly into long-term disability leave. Blaikie confirmed a Facebook post that the cancer had been diagnosed as terminal. The diocese is asking for prayers and held a mass for his healing and comfort Oct. 23.
The Executive Committee of the Diocesan Council of Rupert’s Land has appointed Blaikie as diocesan administrator while the bishop’s chair is vacant.
Ordained as a priest in 1990, Woodcroft earned his master’s degree in divinity at Huron University College in London, Ont., worked as a priest in the diocese of Algoma and then served as the incumbent at St. Paul’s Anglican Church Fort Gary until his election as bishop of Rupert’s Land, which spans parts of Ontario and Manitoba, including Winnipeg, in 2018. He has been an associate of Rupert’s Land Indigenous Council and was an Anglican representative in hearings for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a settlement between church, state and Indigenous representatives approved in 2006.
When he was first elected bishop, Woodcroft said he looked forward to seeing the church not through the standard numerical metrics of membership and attendance, but through a lens of discipleship. He hoped to judge success by how engaged Anglicans were in following Christ in daily life, volunteering in their communities and living out their faith, he said in a 2018 Anglican Journal article.
That theme has remained a focus during his time in office, said Blaikie.
“I can’t speak for him, but my sense was that aspects of the church had fallen into a kind of membership model,” he said, describing an attitude where Anglicans think of themselves as being members of a group, but not necessarily active participants in a way of life. “His drive was to move people from a sort of club mentality to just journeying with Jesus in life. It’s about each other, it’s about relationships with God, it’s about relationships with fellow Christians, with other people who are not Christians.”
As well as respecting him as a leader in the church, Blaikie added, he has fostered a close relationship with the bishop as a friend.
“Geoff and I are dear friends and have been for many years. He is a deeply caring, tender warm, wonderful human being. He is very much a pastor, very much a person who journeys with other Christians. Yeah, he’s pretty special in many, many ways. I care for the man deeply.”