Canada Anglicans can't halt conservative defections
Tue 22 Jan 2008
By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of the Anglican church has made it clear he is powerless to stop conservative Canadian and U.S. congregations, upset with their national churches' positions on homosexuality, from leaving and affiliating with orthodox branches in Latin America and Africa.

It was a frank admission by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, of the limits of his power, even though he is opposed to cross-border ecclesiastical moves.

Williams was responding to a plea by the liberal leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada to address the fact that the orthodox Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of the Americas had started in November giving oversight to some congregations -- or "intervening" in Canada. the rest