Jonathan Goodall, Anglican Bishop of Ypsfleet, resigned to convert to the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury and Anglican President Justin Welby announced on Friday.
Welby thanked Bishop for his eight years of service in this capacity and wished him and his wife Sarah all the best for the future.
Welby Goodall was ordained bishop in 2013, shortly after assuming his ministry. The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Kent, serves as Bishop of Suffragan for West Canterbury. Goodall, born in 1961, said his decision was preceded by a long period of prayer, one of the “hardest phases” of his life.
After decisions by the Anglican Church to appoint women to priests and then to bishops as well, many clergymen from the “Conservative” and so-called “Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church” converted to Catholicism. At the height of the controversy in the early 1990s, this was number three in the Anglican Church hierarchy with the then Bishop of London. Pope Benedict XVI created her own regular group for evangelical converts in 2009.
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