Torres Strait petitions for Personal Ordinariate from Rome: The Church of England Newspaper, May 21, 2010 p 8.

The Rt. Rev. Tolowa Nona of the Torres Strait

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The Church of the Torres Strait, a breakaway group from the Anglican Church of Australia, has announced that it will petition Pope Benedict XVI for the creation of a personal ordinariate under the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus.

At a meeting of the church’s synod on Badu Island in the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea, the Rt. Rev. Tolowa Nona announced that the move to come under Roman Catholic control had been adopted by unanimous consent.

The Church of the Torres Strait, which ministers to islanders and indigenous Anglicans in Northern Queensland, is a province of the Traditional Anglican Communion, and is distinct from TAC’s Anglican Catholic Church in Australia.

Originally a part of the Anglican Church of Australia, the Church of the Torres Strait was formed in December 1997 when the Torres Strait Regional Anglican Council voted to quit the Diocese of North Queensland for the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Formed in 1915 when the London Mission Society (LMS) turned over its congregations to the Anglican Church, the Torres Straits were the center of the Anglican Diocese of Carpentaria based on Thursday Island.

In September 1995, the Diocese of Carpentaria voted to become absorbed within the diocese of North Queensland, as part of the absorption process the final synod of the diocese enacted an ‘Islander Bishop Church Law’, which provided for the election of a regional Bishop of Torres Strait who would live on Thursday Island.

It was agreed by the Carpentaria synod that the bishop would be “chosen by the clergy and laity of the Torres Strait region, according to Torres Strait culture and custom and recommended to the Bishop of North Queensland for appointment.”

The merger agreement provided for a Torres Strait Regional Conference whose members would be residents of Torres Strait, and a ‘Torres Strait Regional Council’ with authority for local administration.

In 1996 North Queensland elected a new Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Clyde Wood, and affirmed the Diocese of Carpentaria’s call for an indigenous suffragan for the Torres Strait. In 1997 the Torres Strait Regional Conference was unable to decide among a slate of nominees, and Bishop Wood was asked to select the new bishop.

Bishop Wood chose a priest, the Rev. Morrison Ted Mosby, an islander priest, who was not on the Conference’s list of nominees.  The conference objected to the selection, citing Mosby’s support for the ordination of women and his Pentecostal-influenced churchmanship—traits that the Anglo-Catholic diocese found highly objectionable.

The senior Torres Strait clergyman, the Rev. Gayai Hankin, warden of the Theological College on Moa Island and former dean of the cathedral wrote to the clergy of the Diocese of North Queensland on Dec 4, 1997, “We feel betrayed by the hierarchy … The scandal of disunity has been created … Time after time over the last months our senior clergy, other clergy, Regional Council and Regional Conference, all virtually unanimously, warned our leaders the appointment was made in the wrong way to the wrong man … we feel our culture, our church history, the importance to us of our faith and the importance of the office of bishop, not only to Anglicans but to all Torres Strait Islanders has been ignored.”

After Bishop Wood declined to back down from his choice, 16 of the 18 clergy in the Torres Strait and a majority of its members, quit the diocese.  In April 1998, Fr. Hankin was consecrated bishop and the church accepted in to the Traditional Anglican Communion.

The vote last week by the Torres Strait synod effectively ends the 100-year Anglican presence in the region.