Canadian diocese calls it quits

The Diocese of Moosonee synod has voted to dissolve the diocese. Delegates to the June 3-5 diocesan synod in Timmins, Ontario unanimously adopted a resolution directing its officers to begin talks with the Province of Ontario to dissolve the diocese and create a mission area to oversee its 26 parishes.

“Nothing will change immediately,” Bishop Thomas Corston told the synod. “We are simply preparing a way forward for our diocese when it becomes clear that we need to make the jump.”

The Anglican Church of Canada’s Council of the North last year announced that its grant in aid for the diocese would be cut from $249,000 to $125,000 per year. The diocese responded by selling a number of diocesan properties, including the bishop’s home. However, declining revenues and fewer Anglicans in the pews was leading inexorably to bankruptcy, the bishop said.

The synod considered three options: do nothing, prepare for dissolution, or transfer the southern deaneries to the Dioceses of Algoma and Quebec, leaving a purely Cree Indian and Inuit diocese in the north around Hudson’s Bay

.
To read more, click here.

To learn more about the Diocese of Moosonee, click here.