Diocese of Montreal episcopal election
Links and questions about how church democracy can go off the rails.
This will be a post of niche interest but in my world there are no shortage of links and documents flying around right now in anticipation of the impending election for a new bishop of Montreal, currently scheduled for this Saturday, May 3, 2025. I’ve received requests for and been sent e-mails and other queries with links to particular items. In the interests of simplicity and ease of reference, I’ve decided to put it all in one place, i.e. right here, in roughly chronological order with some slight annotation. At the very end, I’ve tried to assemble a list of questions that many people are trying to sort through right now.
A general disclosure at the outset: this is not a large diocese and I know and am known to virtually all of the people—candidates, search committee members, diocesan council members, etc.—involved in all of this.
Official Documentation
The official convening circular for the electoral synod, posted in early March. This contains the report from the search committee (p. 22) that first raised concerns about the integrity of the election, the safe church policies of the diocese, and the electoral canons. It also contains the profiles of the candidates.
A note of clarification from the Diocesan Council, from March 21. This unsigned letter seeks to refute the concerns raised in the search committee’s report. So far as I can tell, there is no public list of members of the Diocesan Council so it is impossible to know who wrote this or stands behind it.
The Constitution and Canons of the Diocese of Montreal that govern our common life. Canon 1 governs episcopal elections.
The Constitution and Canons of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada. Despite the somewhat confusing name, this is the internal province of the Anglican Church of Canada of which the Diocese of Montreal is a part. The bishops of this province will need to consent to whomever the diocese elects, if the diocese does elect someone, as specified in Canon 3.
News articles
The church press have picked up on this story repeatedly. Here is what I have seen, in chronological order.
“Doubt Looms Over Montreal Bishop Election,” The Living Church, March 20: the article that first drew attention to the search committee’s report and linked to a lawsuit currently in progress against one of the candidates. See below for more.
“Montreal Anglicans Deserve Answers,” The Living Church, March 20: a commentary piece that compared going ahead with the election to “Russian roulette.” This article was subsequently taken down from TLC’s website but lives forever online on archive.org, which is what the link leads to.
“Montreal bishop stands by episcopal election process,” The Anglican Journal, March 28: the Anglican Church of Canada’s paper picks up on the story with an interview with our current bishop. Even as the article makes clear the bishop has no role in the current process, it quotes her as saying “I don’t think there are any problems with our current safe church policy” and said no one had made a formal safe church complaint against any candidate.
“Search for next Bishop of Montreal in turmoil after resignations,” Church Times, March 28: weighing in from across the pond, the newspaper in the Church of England picks up on the story. I don’t seem much new information in this story. The connection for them seems to be that two of the candidates were ordained in the Church of England. (They don’t note this but a third was ordained in Wales.)
“Safe church complaint—now resolved—was made against episcopal candidate, Montreal bishop says in correction of previous remarks,” The Anglican Journal, April 16, 2025: the Journal returns with on-the-record material from a former music director at Christ Church Cathedral where two episcopal candidates are currently employed, asserting that the music director had made a complaint. (Disclosure: during that time, that music director also worked on a very part-time basis at the college where I am principal.) Our current bishop is now quoted as saying there weren’t any “unresolved formal complaints” against candidates. She also reports that there is now a committee in the diocese to update the safe church policy—the one about which it had previously been said there were no problems.
“Safeguarding complaint revealed at Montreal,” Church Times, April 25: a rehash of much of what the AJ already reported, though perhaps some new quotations from the former music director.
“Safe church concerns trouble Montreal bishop election,” The Living Church, April 28: a long article containing some new and potentially quite incendiary reporting, including two members of the search committee anonymously confirming that the committee had “serious concerns” about three candidates who were nominated and unanimously voted to ask one nominee to withdraw. They were then told “by diocesan officials”—unnamed—that the candidate—unnamed—had to be kept on the ballot.
I should say, by way of a blanket disclosure, that I have at one time or another written for each of these publications and have or currently do subscribe to them. I also find them all reputable, if not perfect. (Indeed, as I am nothing if not an amateur news critic, I have already written a letter to the editor of one of these publications about the quality of one of these articles, a letter that I gather will see the light of day sometime in June.)
Letters
The April 28 Living Church article quotes a letter written in early April by 39 members of synod making several requests for more information and quotes a portion of the Diocesan Council’s reply. I was one of the signatories of this letter so I have copy of both it and the reply. I don’t know how it ended up in the hands of The Living Church but as it was not intended to be public—and is not posted anywhere online—I am not linking to it. The quotations of both letters in TLC’s article are basically accurate.
Other material
The claim from the search committee at the outset of this process that there may be concerns about one or more of the candidates prompted lots of discussion and googling about the various candidates and then lots of links being passed around. The ones that have been shared with me include:
Insolvency paperwork related to Trinity Centres Cambridge: this is a lengthy series of legal documents and judgments related to the non-profit run by one of the candidates. I can’t say I’ve read all of this or can really understand what is going on here but I’m not a lawyer. I’ve been told that the appendices to the receiver’s reports are where the interesting information is.
Link to the charitable listing from Relèven, the current name of the church property development charitable organization run by one of the candidates, including the required financial information that needs to be reported on an annual basis.
There are two Anglican Journal articles from 18 years ago about “significant accounting irregularities” in the Diocese of Quebec that led to the resignation of one of the candidates as treasurer. A subsequent investigation cleared him, and the bishop at the time expressed regret to the candidate for the inconvenience. According to this candidate’s resume, this investigation was followed by a 12-year absence from church ministry. This relates to questions (see the April 28 Living Church article) about candidates whose ministry has taken them outside of the church, though this candidate is not mentioned in that connection.
Social media posts
No person who has a vote in the electoral synod has, to my knowledge, been active on social media about the election. However, several people who are or have been associated with the Diocese of Montreal have offered at times quite lengthy posts on all of this. I’m almost certainly not getting all of them, but here are a few, though I don’t know what permissions are set on them and if they will be able to be seen publicly.
The current national bishop of the Disciples of Christ in Canada (formerly a priest licensed in this diocese) offered one post on March 28 in response to the first Anglican Journal article that said the bishop was lying. A second post on April 17 in response to the second AJ article documented problems in the diocese’s safe church polices and claimed there was more to the story that wasn’t being reported. A priest licensed in Montreal but currently in Europe offers a very (!) long dive into the diocese’s safe church policies.
Outstanding questions
There are so many! Sorting unfounded rumour from fact has been immensely difficult. But here are a couple among the many that are swirling right now:
Is the reporting accurate that the search committee voted unanimously to ask a candidate to step aside and was pressured to leave the candidate on the slate? If so, who was the candidate? Who applied the pressure?
Is the diocese’s existing safe church policy adequate? If not, is it possible to hold an election under the current policy? Likewise, is the current canon governing episcopal elections adequate? If not, can an election be held?
Is it possible or desirable to delay an election? If so, how long would it be appropriate to delay for? What would the diocese do in the interim? Would it merely suspend the process with the existing slate or would it require starting all over again? If so, who would ever want to be on a search committee?
What is the nature of the lawsuit currently underway against one of the candidates? To my knowledge, there is no information about this lawsuit in any of the candidate information and electors are left to muddle through as best we can.
To what extent should electors be concerned about time candidates have spent outside of church ministry? To what extent should they be asked to account for this time?
The first article in The Living Church raises the possibility that one candidate could have a conflict of interest between work running a charity dedicated to church property management and a diocese selling church buildings. Is there a conflict here? If so, what steps will be taken to address it?
One of the regrets of this process has been that there has been no public venue to address any of these questions. Instead, they have been confined to private conversations with different people working with often quite different levels of information.
Fun fact
Since this is all rather depressing, perhaps I can end with this fun fact: only one of the seven candidates was ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada. The others were ordained in The Episcopal Church (2), the Church of England (2), the Episcopal Church of Congo (1), and the Church in Wales (1). It is often said that Canadian dioceses tend to elect internal candidates and while it’s true that six of the seven candidates currently work in the diocese, I found this statistic striking.
Update: I have written a separate post about how the discipline of lament is proving helpful to me in this time and a third post about actual practical options for moving forward—or not—at the electoral synod.
Thanks for this piece. I appreciate the shout-out and strongly agree that all the questions you lay out are vital ones. Alas: I rather doubt that they will be sorted out by the election on Saturday (assuming it goes forward as planned), which leaves the electors in a painfully difficult position.
I want to underline your last point. In other episcopal search processes in which I have been involved, there have been multiple opportunities for Q&A with the candidates and generally more public conversations. The lack of such opportunities here has not, I fear, served us well.
I think you ask appropriate questions. I hope there is an opportunity for us (candidates) to answer questions. The lack of transparency is not a good way to start a new episcopacy.