archbishop

Oct. 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Anglican archbishop has been accused of sexual misconduct and abuse of power, according to a recently filed complaint.

Stephen Wood, 62, has been accused by a former children’s ministry worker of putting his hand on the back of her head and attempting to kiss her in his office in April 2024. The alleged incident happened two months before Wood ascended to the church’s top post, The Washington Post reported.

The woman, Claire Buxton, also accused Wood of unexpectedly giving her approximately $35,000 from church coffers before he made the alleged advance. Wood, the father of four children, remains the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Charleston, S.C., and a bishop who oversees more than 40 churches across the southern United States.

Woods stands to be defrocked and forced to resign if his case goes to an ecclesiastical trial.

Woods issued a statement but refused to answer questions about the alleged incident.

“I do not believe these allegations have any merit,” he said in the statement. “I place my faith and trust in the process outlined in our canons to bring clarity and truth in these matters and respectfully decline to comment further at this time.”

In her statement to the Post, Buxton accused Wood of calling her “Claire Bear” in front of other people and offered to send her to a resort for spa treatments and relaxation.

“I was literally trapped in a church that felt like hell,” Buxton told The Post. She said she turned her face to avoid the kiss and immediately told a colleague about the incident.

“He put his hand on the back of my head and tried to turn it up towards him while he slowly brought his face towards my face to kiss me,” she wrote in her affidavit. “I dropped my face down towards his shoulder so he couldn’t. He held for a second and then let go, and I said, ‘Ok, bye,’ and ran out of his office.” The Post reported that at least four other church employees voiced concerns about Wood’s behavior.

The allegations against Wood come as the ecclesiastical trial of another denominational leader, Bishop Stewart Ruch, draws to a close. Ruch oversees a diocese in the Midwest and has been accused by parishioners and clergy of responding slowly to allegations against a lay leader, Mark Rivera, of abuse and grooming.

Rivera has been convicted of felony child sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault in a different case. A verdict in Ruch’s ecclesiastical trial is expected later this year.

Announcement draws criticism from Anglican churches that oppose female bishops.

The Church of England has named Sarah Mullally as the next archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to be appointed to the Church’s most senior office.

Mullally, 63, will become the spiritual head of 85 million Anglicans globally, and like her predecessors will face a Communion divided over several issues, including the role of women in the Church and the acceptance of same-sex couples.

Mullally replaces Justin Welby, who resigned due to a child abuse cover-up scandal last year.

The new archbishop addressed congregants for the first time at Canterbury Cathedral on Friday and spoke of the hope she saw in the world despite uncertain times.

Mullally said her first calling is to follow Christ and spread his message, but she also used her speech to address issues in the United Kingdom, including migration and the deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday, which killed two people.

“We are witnessing hatred that rises up through fractures across our communities,” Mullally said.

“I know that the God who is with us draws near to those who suffer. We then, as a Church, have a responsibility to be a people who stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism in all its forms. Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart,” she added.

Mullally’s appointment drew criticism from conservative Anglican churches in Africa on account of her gender.

The Global Anglican Future Conference, which includes bishops from Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, said the appointment of Mullally would further split the Church because she “promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality.”

“Though there are some who will welcome the decision to appoint Bishop Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy,” the Reverend Laurent Mbanda said in a statement for the group.

The Church of England’s evangelical wing called for a stop to what it referred to as a drift away from scripture.

Mullally, who has been bishop of London since 2018, has previously championed blessings for same-sex couples.

The Vatican congratulated Mullally and wished her well. King Charles III approved Mullally’s nomination and offered his congratulations.

She will officially become the archbishop of Canterbury at a ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral in January 2026.

Cherry Vann has joined the growing list of religious leaders making LGBTQIA+ history within the church.

On Wednesday (30 July), Vann was appointed as the new Archbishop of Wales, becoming the first woman to lead any of Britain’s Anglican churches and the first lesbian to serve as an archbishop globally. 

According to The Guardian, her historic placement was reached after two days of deliberations by an electoral college boasting clergy and laypersons.

Vann’s decades-long experience as a church official dates back to the 1980s, when she trained for the ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge, and was ordained as a deacon in 1989.

Since then, the 66-year-old has risen within the church ranks, becoming one of the first women to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1994, and serving as an archdeacon of Rochdale in the Diocese of Manchester for 11 years.

In January 2020, Vann was consecrated as the bishop of Monmouth, holding the position for the last five years. Before she was appointed the new Archbishop of Wales, the position was held by Andrew John.

In June, John abruptly left his role following the May publication of a safeguarding review at Bangor Cathedral in North Wales, which featured complaints related to inappropriate language, excessive consumption of alcohol and a “culture in which sexual boundaries seemed blurred.”

There was no suggestion that John perpetuated the aforementioned behaviour or conducted any wrongdoing.

Following her appointment, Vann released a statement detailing her first priority as the new archbishop of Wales.

“The first thing I shall need to do is to ensure that the issues which have been raised in the last six months are properly addressed and that I work to bring healing and reconciliation, and to build a really good level of trust across the Church and the communities the Church serves,” she said.

Since the news was announced, Vann has received support from her church peers, including Archbishop Mark O’Toole.

“I congratulate Archbishop-elect Cherry on her appointment as the new Archbishop of Wales. I am sure she will be able to bring healing to all in the Church of Wales. I assure her of my prayers and those of the Catholic community,” he said.

You can read more about Archbishop Vann here.

Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a leader in protests against the PM, is accused of a plot to overthrow the government.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says security officials have thwarted a coup plot involving a leading cleric from Armenia’s national church.

The arrest of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, leader of the opposition movement Holy Struggle, on Wednesday marks a sharp escalation in Pashinyan’s standoff with the leadership of the powerful Apostolic Church.

The church’s leader, Catholicos Garegin II, has called for Pashinyan’s resignation after Armenia lost a war to Azerbaijan in 2020, while Galstanyan, the primate of the Diocese of Tavush, led mass protests last year, aiming to unseat the prime minister, channelling widespread public anger over military defeats and territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.

“Law enforcement officers prevented a large and sinister plan by the ‘criminal-oligarchic clergy’ to destabilize the Republic of Armenia and seize power,” Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on Wednesday, sharing a statement by Armenia’s Investigative Committee.

The committee said it had filed criminal charges against Galstanyan and 15 others, who they said had “acquired the means and tools necessary to commit a terrorist attack and seize power”.

A total of 14 people had been arrested, investigators said, without naming them.

The committee’s statement claimed that Galstanyan — who has previously expressed his desire to replace Pashinyan as prime minister, although he is unable to hold office due to being a dual Armenian-Canadian citizen — sought to overthrow the government with the help of his supporters.

It said the group had recruited about 1,000 people, mainly former soldiers and police officers, and divided them into strike groups, assigning each a task to destabilise the country, by blocking roads, inciting violence or blocking the internet.

It claimed that the group had acquired weapons, explosives, and other dangerous materials in preparation for the plot.

It said searches were under way at the homes of Galstanyan and about 30 of his associates.

The committee also published audio recordings purporting to reveal Galstanyan and others discussing plans for the alleged coup plot.

‘We are coming’

News.am, an Armenian news website, published footage of Galstanyan being taken from his house into a car by masked police officers, and driven away.

“Evil, listen carefully – whatever you do, you have very little time left. Hold on, we are coming,” he said, in an apparent reference to Pashinyan, as a crowd outside shouted “Nikol is a traitor”, the AFP news agency reported.

A lawmaker close to Galstanyan, Garnik Danielyan, said the raids were “actions of a dictatorial regime” and said the accusations against the archbishop were fabricated, AFP reported.

Wednesday’s developments follow the arrest of another prominent government opponent earlier this month, when Russian-Armenian real estate billionaire Samvel Karapetyan was detained on accusations of making public calls to usurp power, the Reuters news agency reported.

Divided nation

Armenia’s humiliating military defeat by Azerbaijan, resulting in the 2023 loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist enclave in Azerbaijan, has left bitter divisions in Armenia, notably between Pashinyan and the Apostolic Church.

Earlier this month, Pashinyan unsuccessfully attempted to oust Garegin II as the head of the church, calling on the faithful to elect a new spiritual leader to “liberate” the church, AFP reported.

Russia, a treaty ally of Armenia, said the alleged coup plot was an internal matter for Yerevan, but had an interest in calm and order being maintained, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

For years in this columna, I have repeatedly posed a simple challenge to Archbishop José H. Gomez:

Stand up for Los Angeles, because L.A. needs you.

The head of the largest Catholic diocese in the United States has largely stood athwart the liberal city he’s supposed to minister since he assumed his seat in 2011 but especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. He has railed against “woke” culture and refused to meet with progressive Catholic groups. When the Dodgers in 2023 honored the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag troupe that wears nun’s habits while raising funds for the marginalized, he led a special Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels that amounted to a public exorcism.

Most perplexingly, the Mexico-born archbishop stayed largely quiet as the Herod that’s Donald Trump promised to clamp down on legal immigration and deport people without legal status during his 2024 presidential run. As head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the end of last decade, Gomez wrote and spoke movingly about the need to treat all immigrants with dignity and fix this country’s broken system once and for all. But his gradual turn to the right as archbishop has gone so far that the National Catholic Reporter, where I’m an occasional contributor, labeled him a “failed culture warrior” when they anointed him their Newsmaker for that year.

Gomez’s devolution was especially dispiriting because L.A. Catholic leaders have taught their American peers how to embrace Latino immigrants ever since Archbishop John Cantwell helped refugees from Mexico’s Cristero War resettle in the city in the 1920s. Clerical legends like Luis Olivares and Richard Estrada transformed La Placita Church near Olvera Street into a sanctuary for Central American immigrants during the 1980s and 1990s in the face of threats from the feds. Gomez’s predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, long drew national attention for attacking anti-immigrant legislation during his sermons and marching alongside immigrant rights protesters, a cross to bear that Gomez never warmed up to.

So when L.A. began to push back against Donald Trump’s immigration raids earlier this month only to see an onerous federal crackdown, I expected Gomez to do little even as L.A.-area priests bore witness to what was happening.

Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries appeared in a viral video proclaiming the righteous, if well-worn, message that no human being is illegal, but also that “we stand with anybody who’s demonized or left out, or excluded, or seen as disposable … it’s kinda how we roll here.” His fellow Jesuit, Dolores Mission pastor Brendan Busse, was there with activists during a June 9 migra raid at a factory in the Garment District that saw SEIU California president David Huerta arrested for civil disobedience.

I especially admired Father Peter O’Reilly, who was a priest in the L.A. Archdiocese for 44 years before retiring in 2005. The 90-year-old cleric was at Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 8, the day protesters torched Waymo cars, just blocks away from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. O’Reilly told a television station in his native Ireland afterward that it was important for him be there to let immigrants know “we were with them and for them.”

Gomez? The archbishop put out a weak-salsa statement around that time about how he was “troubled” by the raids. His Instagram account urged people a few days later to light a candle and pray for peace. That same day, Diocese of Orange Bishop Kevin Vann and his auxiliary bishops posted a letter condemning the raids, which they maintained “invoke our worst instincts” and “spread crippling fear and anxieties upon the hard-working, everyday faithful among us.”

You know things are upside-down in this world when O.C. is more down for immigrant rights than L.A.

Faith leaders lead a prayer vigil in Gloria Molina Grand Park on June 10 to stand in support of community members facing immigration raids in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

I wanted to blast Gomez last week but held back, praying that he might change for the better. So I’m happy to report he’s starting to.

On June 10, the same day he posted his Instagram call for prayer, the archbishop also attended an evening interfaith vigil along with Boyle, Busse and other faith leaders to tell a crowd of over 1,000 people, “Immigration is about more than politics — it is about us, the kind of people we want to be.” Gomez asked all parishes in the L.A. Archdiocese the following day to hold special Masses with L.A.’s current immigration troubles in mind. He led the lunchtime one in the cathedral, telling parishioners during his homily, “We want to go out and console our neighbors and strengthen their hearts and encourage them to keep the faith.”

Gomez saved his most stinging remarks for this Tuesday in his regular column for Angelus News, the archdiocese’s publication. While not able to resist a shot at the Biden administration, the soft-spoken prelate nevertheless said of Trump’s raids: “This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes.” Accompanying his thoughts was a photo of a young woman holding a sign that read, “Jesus was an Immigrant” in front of California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear.

“For him to show up was meaningful,” Busse said. Since Trump’s inauguration, Dolores Mission has hosted training for the rapid response networks that have alerted people about immigration raids. “But I hope there’s more. The diocese has a huge capacity for organizing, and I hope that his leadership can move people in a large way.”

Busse said the first instinct of too many religious leaders is “to step back into a place of safety” when controversy emerges. “But there’s also an invitation to be brave and courageous. What we need to do is step into the situation to bring the peace that we’re praying for.”

Joseph Tómas McKellar is executive director of PICO California, a faith-based community organizing network that co-sponsored the interfaith vigil last week where Gomez spoke. The nonprofit used to teach citizenship and English classes in the L.A. Archdiocese and McKellar remembered Gomez attending a gathering of social justice groups in Modesto in 2017 as an active participant “in these small group conversations.”

The PICO California head said Gomez’s recent reemergence from his years in the political wilderness “was deeply encouraging. … Our bishops and the leaders of our denominations have a special responsibility to exercise prophetic leadership. The prophets are the ones who denounce what is broken in this world, but also announce a different vision. I do see him more embracing more that call and that challenge to reflect.”

An archdiocese spokesperson said Gomez was unavailable for comment because he was at a retreat for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Earlier this week , the group released a reflection declaring, “No one can turn a deaf ear to the palpable cries of anxiety and fear heard in communities throughout the country in the wake of a surge in immigration enforcement activities.”

I have no expectations that Archbishop Gomez’s politics will ever fully reflect L.A.’s progressive soul. He remains the only American bishop affiliated with the orthodox Opus Dei movement and sits on the ecclesiastical advisory board for the Napa Institute, an organization of rich Catholics that has labored mightily over the past decade to tilt the church rightward. Its co-founder, Orange County-based multimillionaire developer Tim Busch, wrote earlier this year with no irony that Trump’s administration “is the most Christian I’ve ever seen” and told The Times in 2023 that Gomez “is one of my closest advisors.”

But I’m glad Gomez is moving in the right direction, right when the city needs him the most. I continue to pray his voice gets bolder and stronger and that the region’s millions of Catholics — and all Angelenos, for that matter — follow the archbishop’s call to action to help immigrants while pushing him to do more.

I hope Gomez keeps in his heart what Busse told me near the end of our chat: “If the faith community doesn’t stand up when there’s a moral issue to stand up for, then I don’t know what happens.”