The Corvallis Gazette-Times in Oregon interviews Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori one year after her election as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Jefferts Schori is still hopeful tensions within the denomination and the worldwide Anglican Communion can be resolved.
“I think as a Christian you have to live in hope of reconciliation always,” Jefferts Schori said during a brief stop in Corvallis at the beginning of a weeklong vacation.
“If we can get people to get out of a face-saving mode and refocus on the mission of the church, I think we can learn to live together and stay one body.”
During her many travels over the past nine months since her installation at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., however, Jefferts Schori said she’s seen a “softening around the edges.”
By the end of the year, the 53-year-old former oceanographer will have been in nearly a third of the 110 Episcopal dioceses in which she has oversight and more than half a dozen foreign countries including Tanzania, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras and Colombia.
She said she has been pleasantly surprised by how many primates from other countries have invited her to visit. Many of the invitations have come because of the work American missionaries did to help start Episcopal churches in other nations. But other invitations have sprung from common interests, she said.
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