Australian primate to co-chair Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue

The Anglican Primate of Australia, Archbishop Peter Carnley, has been asked to co-chair the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Archbishop Carnley was a member of the 'Eames Commission' on women in the episcopate. He has served as a member of the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), since its inception, and took part in the Mississauga consultation of May 2000, which reflected on the work of ARCIC over the past three decades and issued the texts "Communion in Mission" and the "Action Plan". Speaking from Australia, the Archbishop told the Anglican Communion News Service: "It is a great honour to have been asked to be the Anglican co-chair of ARCIC for the final phase of its present work. A good deal of the intensive labour has, of course, already been done by the Commission under the chairmanship of Bishop Griswold, to whom we are all much indebted. "It will be a particular delight for me to work with my good friend Archbishop Alex Brunett, with whom I have already worked on the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission." He added: "As a member of the IARCCUM sub-committee, which has been developing strategies to facilitate the reception of the ARCIC documents, so as to make them better known in the life of the Roman Catholic Church and the member churches of the Anglican Communion, it will now be a real pleasure to be involved in the completion of ARCIC's latest document on the place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in our shared tradition of faith and spirituality. I look forward to this task with warmest enthusiasm." Peter Frederick Carnley was born in New South Wales, Australia, in 1937. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, and awarded a first class honours degree in Arts. After working briefly in the legal profession, he studied Theology, and was ordained priest in the Diocese of Bathurst in 1964. Dr Carnley undertook his doctoral studies in Theology at Cambridge University. He was awarded his PhD in 1968, and went on to hold a Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge. On his return to Australia in 1972, Dr Carnley became Warden of St John's College at the University of Queensland. While in Queensland, Dr Carnley was Lecturer in Systematic Theology and a Canon of St John's Cathedral. He was made Archbishop of Perth in 1981 and elected Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia in 2000. ARCIC is the main instrument of theological dialogue and reflection between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. Source: ACN