Conger

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has appointed the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne to serve as his representative to the Vatican and as Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

The Very Rev. David Richardson will take up the post after Easter in succession to the current director, the Rt. Rev. John Flack, the former Bishop of Huntingdon.

“I am delighted that someone of David Richardson’s stature will be carrying forward the much-valued work of his predecessor, Bishop John Flack. His role at this important time builds on four decades of dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics,” Dr. Williams said.

“It will be exercised in the context of the ‘many area of witness and service” which call for “closer co-operation between us’, as Pope Benedict and I affirmed in our Common Declaration last year,” he said.

Dean Richardson stated he was “looking forward” to working with “Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and Lambeth Palace in the cause of the Gospel and our shared ecumenical endeavour.”

Born in Australia, Dean Richardson was reared in North Devon and the Midlands where his father served as a parish priest. Educated at the University of Queensland, St Barnabas College Adelaide, Melbourne Divinity College and the University of Birmingham, he served his curacy at Great St. Mary’s in Cambridge and returned to Australia in 1979. In 1988 he was appointed Dean of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide and Dean of St. Paul’s in Melbourne in 1999.