New bishop-elect says diocese needs to discuss its safe church policies
The Anglican diocese of Montreal has elected a Congolese Canadian and former Roman Catholic priest as its 13th bishop.
Victor-David Mbyui Bipungu, archdeacon of St. Andrew and priest-in-charge at Église Anglicane de la Nativité St James (Rosemère) and St Simon and St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church (Laval-Chomedey), was elected on the fifth ballot at the May 3 diocesan electoral synod. He will be consecrated at Christ Church Cathedral on Oct. 3, becoming the first Black person to serve as a diocesan bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada (Peter DeCourcy Fenty, born in Barbados, previously served as an area bishop in the diocese of Toronto).
Mbuyi Bipungu says he did not expect to be elected bishop. When colleagues first approached him to become a candidate, he recalls, he was skeptical, but decided to put his name forward after reflection and prayer.
Upon being elected, he says, “I experienced a lot of emotions. I’m grateful.” He felt the conviction that “whatever happened before this election, the Holy Spirit was with us and God is with us in everything we do. I’m very strengthened in my faith … I have a proof that God is acting in our church, in our lives—particularly when we think that it’s not possible for us to do anything. God gives us new opportunities and new perspectives.”
The election had garnered controversy after the search committee issued a statement citing concerns over the diocese’s safe church policy and restrictions on the committee’s ability to protect the integrity of the voting process.
As a member of the diocesan council and episcopal candidate, Mbuyi Bipungu says he kept away from discussion of the electoral process, leaving council meetings whenever the topic arose. He says he was not aware of all the issues raised by the electoral process and the search committee, nor who made the decision to let all the candidates on the ballot.
“I can say that it’s a good decision because any one of us can say, ‘I was treated unjustly,’” Mbuyi Bipungu says. “After many messages were exchanged among us, we had a good dynamic among us candidates … We were sharing messages, encouraging each other, praying together online.”
“The first victory is that the diocese of Montreal has decided to go forward … We have a lot of things to do together as a church,” he says. “One of my priorities is to learn from the past and to do what is needed for the future. Our safe church policy is one of the topics on which we have to discuss and to do what is needed.” He highlights the need to “to respect everybody in this diocese.”
Mbuyi Bipungu was ordained as a Roman Catholic deacon and then priest in the parish of St-André, Tshikapa City, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996. He was director of studies and principal at two Catholic secondary schools in Congo before moving to Sainte-Thérèse, Que., serving in the Roman Catholic parish of Sainte-Thérèse-d’Avila as assistant priest from 2004 to 2007 and priest-in-charge until 2013.
His move to Canada, he says, came as the result of a conversation between Roman Catholic bishops who invited him to Quebec to serve in ministry and to continue his education by earning a doctorate. In 2013 he received his PhD in philosophy, focused on the ethics of international relations, from the Université de Montréal.
Mbuyi Bipungu become an Anglican in 2014 and served in 2015 as rector of the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre in the Anglican diocese of Kinshasa in the Congo.
His conversion to Anglicanism, he says, stretches back to conversations he had in 2009 with an Anglican priest in Montreal. While still a Roman Catholic priest, he says, he had meetings with a father and husband who asked him questions about Roman Catholic doctrine and found he could not accept Mbuyi Bipungu’s advice based on that doctrine. “Our ethics were very difficult to be fulfilled in the life of his family,” Mbuyi Bipungu says.
“It was the synodical conception of governance that attracted me in the Anglican church and the evangelical sense of doing things, being open to the changes that are undergoing in our work today,” he adds. “I saw a great openness in the Anglican church, and this was very, very edifying to me.”
In 2016, Mbuyi Bipungu returned to the diocese of Montreal to take on his current position. He is also a member of Montreal’s diocesan board of governors and Council of General Synod.
As bishop, he says, his first priority will be to reconcile people.
“Many things were [said] in the media about the [electoral] process, but the process is over,” Mbuyi-Bipungu says. “What I said to my colleagues, priests and to the leaders in the diocese is that we have to work together, and for that we have to trust each other.”
Aside from re-examining safe church policies, he says, another priority will be making the church more open to new people including immigrants and French-speaking Québécois. A francophone, Mbuyi-Bipungu speaks three Congolese languages fluently, including Lingala, and is able to converse in both English and Haitian Creole.
“We are experiencing the decrease of attendance in our church and we have to be open to all the people,” Mbuyi-Bipungu says. “Montreal is a place where we are welcoming a lot of immigrants, people from across the world. The Anglican church in Quebec generally and in Montreal has spent a lot of time among the English-speaking people … We have to do what is needed to meet with new people here in Quebec.
“The French-speaking people, they hesitate to join us because they consider the Anglican church just for the English-speaking people … In Quebec, the Roman Catholic Church is the biggest church here. But we have more to give to these people.”
Finally, the bishop-elect plans to prioritize finances and to lend his presence as bishop to supporting parishes in their fundraising activities.
The Rev. Canon Jesse Zink, principal of Montreal Diocesan Theological College and the diocese of Montreal’s canon theologian, said in a Substack post that the election of Mbuyi Bipungu, whom he describes as a friend and colleague, was an “excellent result.”
“Victor-David has served on the board of our college for a number of years and I know him as a funny, prayerful, smart, thoughtful, collaborative, and humble person, who preaches well and presides beautifully in worship,” Zink said. “He is a delight to work with and will be a wonderful bishop.”
The Anglican diocese of Montreal encompasses 72 parishes with an estimated 9,000 members on parish rolls.
Updated May 7.
