For two hours on Sunday afternoon (March 30), Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori held a conversation with lay people in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia Cathedral, listening to their views and responding to their questions about the diocese, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
She urged them not to become mired in the diocese’s major problem — the future of inhibited Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison — but to focus on new possibilities. Echoing her videotaped greeting to the Diocesan Convention last November, she encouraged them to be open to healing as individuals and collectively as a diocese. “Restoring relationships with one another is a significant part of your work right now,” she said.
More than 250 people attended the lay forum and listened intently as the Presiding Bishop responded to about 30 questions directed her way. The questions were wide-ranging in scope and reflected broad interests, but at least a dozen were related to the serious financial challenges the diocese now faces and the lengthy legal procedures that have followed the inhibition of Bennison in 2007.
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