25 New Bishops Gather in Canterbury for Conference

Twenty-five new and recently consecrated bishops from around the world are gathering in Canterbury for the annual New Bishops' Conference, running from 29 October to 9 November 2026 — and today, Thursday 5 November, they spend the day at the Anglican Communion Office in London.

The bishops represent 12 member churches of the Anglican Communion and 13 countries: Australia, Burundi, Canada, Ghana, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Tanzania. Hosted by Canterbury Cathedral with support from the Anglican Communion Office, the conference brings together leaders who were consecrated in places as far apart as the Pacific and the Caribbean, and puts them in one room for twelve days.

For many of them, it is the first time they have stood in Canterbury Cathedral as bishops. The group has already posed for a photograph with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the cathedral — a picture that captures, in a single frame, how wide the Anglican Communion has become.

Twelve Days, Five Marks of Mission

The programme is built around the Five Marks of Mission — Tell, Teach, Tend, Transform, Treasure — the framework the Anglican Communion uses to describe what the Church is for. Each day combines worship at Canterbury Cathedral with Bible study, teaching, and shared meals, giving the new bishops time to learn from one another as much as from the formal sessions.

The five marks cover the whole of the Church's work: proclaiming the Good News, teaching and nurturing believers, responding to human need, transforming unjust structures, and safeguarding creation. For bishops who have just taken up their posts, the marks are less a syllabus than a job description — the shape of the work they will be doing for the rest of their ministries.

Daily worship at the cathedral anchors the conference. Canterbury Cathedral has been the mother church of the Anglican Communion for centuries, and praying in it each morning gives the new bishops a sense of the tradition they have joined. The teaching sessions and shared meals do the rest: bishops from Burundi and Jamaica, from Japan and Kenya, trading stories about what episcopal ministry looks like in their own dioceses.

A Sense of Belonging Together

Canon Christopher Irvine, Director of Education at Canterbury Cathedral, said the conference is designed to give the bishops something they cannot get at home. "I think they will gain a sense of belonging together in one Communion; we want them to have a sense that Canterbury Cathedral is their space," he said.

“We want them to have a sense that Canterbury Cathedral is their space,” Canon Irvine said.

That sense of belonging matters because the Anglican Communion is famously diverse — and famously divided at times. A bishop from Tanzania and a bishop from Canada may disagree on a great deal, but in Canterbury they share a cathedral, a communion, and a conference table. The photograph with the Archbishop is the visible sign of that shared belonging.

The conference also marks a new chapter for Canterbury itself. A new era began for the Church of England under Archbishop Sarah Mullally, as covered in King to Inaugurate 12th General Synod as Archbishop Sarah Mullally Begins New Era. Her predecessor, Justin Welby, spoke recently on a subject that still divides opinion, as reported in Justin Welby Says Slavery Reparations Would Be a Vast Fine on British People. And the wider Christian world has been watching unexpected encounters at the highest level, as told in Today: Pope Leo XIV Meets Bob Dylan at the Vatican and Gives Him a Rosary.

Today in London, Sunday in Canterbury

Today the bishops leave Canterbury for London, spending the day at the Anglican Communion Office. The ACO is the Communion's central secretariat, and the visit gives the new bishops a look at the machinery that holds 42 member churches together across the world.

The conference closes on Remembrance Sunday, 8 November. The bishops will join the Civil Service of Remembrance, share lunch with the Cathedral congregation, and take part in a closing session and an exchange of gifts. Remembrance Sunday is one of the most solemn days in the British calendar, and ending a conference of new bishops there is a deliberate choice: a reminder that ministry, at its heart, is about remembering — the dead, the living, and the God who holds them both.

The exchange of gifts is a small detail, but it says something about the conference's purpose. Bishops arrive in Canterbury as strangers from 13 countries, and they leave with something in their hands from someone they met there. The gifts are tokens, but the relationships they mark are the real work of the twelve days.

Whether 25 bishops from 13 countries can carry a sense of one Communion back to dioceses scattered across the world is the question the conference exists to answer. In twelve days of worship, teaching, and shared meals — and one photograph in Canterbury Cathedral — they have made a start.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.