The Revd Canon Dr John Gibaut, currently Director of Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion Office, is to leave his current role to become President, Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Canada’s Thorneloe University. Dr Gibaut will take up his new role on 1 June, after the next meeting of the triennial Anglican Consultative Council in Hong Kong. Thorneloe University is a founding member of the Laurentian University Federation on the campus of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

In his current role, Dr Gibaut has been the lead Anglican Communion staffer on ecumenical dialogues with other Church families. He has also been the lead advisor on theological issues and on inter-Anglican dialogue. He came to the Anglican Communion from the World Council of Churches, the international ecumenical organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Prior to these two international appointments, Dr Gibaut was an administrator and professor in the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, a bilingual institution federated with the University of Ottawa. From 1994 to 2003, he served as the faculty’s Director of Anglican Studies.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales and Church of England bishops met in Leicester from 16 to 17 January for their biennial conference. Together 27 Catholic and 27 Anglican bishops explored a diverse range of subjects including opportunities for closer collaboration at a regional and national level. Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Archbishops Justin Welby and John Sentamu were present throughout. Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop Welby addressed the gathering.

Fifty bishops – 25 Anglicans and 25 Catholics – will convene in the British city next January 16-17. Rev Worthen told SIR: “Spirituality, theology and coexistence will be the ingredients of the meeting” that with a tight agenda: liturgy and debates with the spotlight on the Declaration “Walking Together On The Way.” Next January 16 and 17 fifty bishops, half of them Catholic and half of them Anglican, will convene in Leicester, central England, a city with an important tradition of interreligious dialogue, for a two-day ecumenical meeting.