Katharine Jefferts Schori was ordained just 12 years before
becoming the first female primate and presiding bishop of the US
branch of the Anglican church.
A quiet and compassionate woman with a sharp intellect, Jefferts
Schori is a member of the US Episcopal Church's liberal majority
and favored the ordination of openly-gay bishop Gene Robinson in
2003 and church blessings for same-sex unions.
While her election in June was hailed as a victory for women in the
2.3-million-member Episcopal Church, conservatives warned it could
make it harder for the church to remain in the 77-million-member
worldwide Anglican Communion.
In a message read out at her investiture Saturday at the Washington
National Cathedral, The Archbishop of Canterbury, the religious
leader of the global church, sent his prayers and best wishes to
Jefferts Schori.
"She will take on this responsibility in the most challenging
times, but she will be supported by the good will and prayers of
very many in the USA and around the world as she strives to lead
faithfully, honestly and collaboratively," he said.
Most of the branches of the Anglican Union around the world have
resisted elevating women to bishops and oppose homosexuality, and
many restricted or severed ties to the Episcopal Church after it
named an openly gay bishop.
Jefferts Schori, formerly the bishop of Nevada, worked hard to
bring about reconciliation with church members who opposed
Robinson's ordination, said Reverend Barbara Lewis, who serves as
Jefferts Schori's secretary.
Jefferts Schori held workshops to facilitate discussion and asked
each of Nevada's 35 parishes to come up with its own policy
governing the blessing of same-sex unions.
"There was one priest who left the diocese on that issue, and a
couple families," Lewis told AFP in a telephone interview in June.
"Most of the rest have stayed."
Jefferts Schori has said that homosexuality is not a sin and that
the Bible should not be interpreted literally.
"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about what it means to live
as a human being. The bible does not have so much to teach us about
what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear," she told
CNN in June.
"The Bible tells us how to treat other human beings and that is
certainly the great message of Jesus, to include the
unincluded."
Jefferts Schori, 52, has a doctorate in oceanography and worked
with the US National Marine Fisheries Service before being ordained
in 1994. She is married to a professor of topology and has one
daughter who is an officer in the US Air Force.
She is also a pilot and logged scores of flight hours going to
Nevada's most remote parishes to check on the needs of
parishioners, Lewis said.
"She is a very quiet, soft-spoken person. Very insightful," said
Lewis, who was on the hiring committee which elected Jefferts
Schori to the post of bishop of Nevada in 2001.
"She is very fair in decision-making. She's very
compassionate."
Jefferts Schori, who speaks fluent Spanish, said she brings
"different life experience" to the top job of the church, according
to the Episcopal News Service.
She expressed a desire "to embrace and celebrate all the diverse
cultures, languages, and origins of the many parts of the Episcopal
Church," it said, mentioning branches in Haiti, Taiwan, Europe, and
elsewhere, and communities of Native Americans, Hispanic-Americans,
African-Americans, and others.
"None is more important than another; all are essential to the
transforming work of the body of Christ," the news service
said.
