Brazilian diocese links with the Americans: CEN 1.23.09 p 6.

Updated 1.25.09 …. A correction to this story.  Bishop Cavalcanti writes that the synod voted to join the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans and to express its solidarity with the ACNA—-it did not vote to join ACNA.

The source for this information, a news report on the Recife diocesan website, has since been taken down.  The other facts as reported in this story are correct, the bishop writes, save for this one point.  I regret the error.  GC

The synod of the Diocese of Recife has voted to leave the shelter of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone and affiliate with the third province movement in North America.

At its Dec 4-6 meeting in Jaboatão dos Guararapes the ex-Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB) diocese voted to join with the ex-Episcopal Church dioceses of Pittsburgh, Quincy, Fort Worth and San Joaquin, along with a number of continuing American and Canadian Anglican and African-led jurisdictions, to form the new province.

The move from the Southern Cone to the third province will take place in June at the Anglican Church in North America’s founding convocation in Fort Worth.

Recife also agreed to amend its canons to bring it in line with the new province passing an ordinance forbidding the consecration of women priests to the episcopate, and also created an archdeaconry based in Rio de Janiero to oversee Anglican churches in Southeast Brazil that have seceded from the IEAB.

Although Recife ordains women to the diaconate and priesthood, the decision to conform its canons to the new province and forbid the consecration of women priests to the episcopate passed overwhelmingly. A spokesman noted the vote was taken the same day as Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti (pictured) ordained the Rev. Pamela Schmaling to the priesthood.

In his synod address, Bishop Cavalcanti also announced the formation of an archdeaconry for South and Southeast Brazil. Under its canons, the jurisdiction of the diocese ran to the nine states of Northeast Brazil. However, its canons permit for “reason of necessity” the creation of ecclesial jurisdictions under the oversight of its bishop outside the diocese. Since 2005 the diocese has had an American archdeaconry overseeing breakaway parishes in Florida, Oregon and Washington in the United States.

Like the United States, the response of the Brazilian Church to Recife has been to depose its clergy and seek legal control over the parish property. In 2005, Bishop Cavalcanti and 32 of the dioceses clergy were deposed by the national church—in proceedings that traditionalists said violated Brazilian canon law. Approximately 95 percent of the lay members of the diocese followed the bishop and clergy out of the IEAB to the Province of the Southern Cone.

The IEAB reconstituted the remnants into a new IEAB Diocese of Recife, and at present there are two Anglican jurisdictions in Northeast Brazil. On Oct 30 the diocesan standing committee rejected suggestions that it was a “continuing church.”

“We are part of the Anglican Communion, part of the Global South, partners of the Networks of the Anglican Communion in the US and Canada, partners of the Common Cause Movement, of GAFCON, signing on to the Jerusalem Declaration and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, in permanent dialogue with all the orthodox expressions of Anglicanism, seeking to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in this slow, difficult, but inevitable realignment,” they said.