Welby conducts wedding of his divorced aide
Archbishop softens Church stance
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has conducted the wedding of a divorcee in a sign of support for those who wish to remarry in church.
Dr Justin Welby presided over the ceremony at Lambeth Palace where one of his senior staff, Ailsa Anderson, married journalist Simon Cole.
Miss Anderson, Dr Welby’s head of media relations and former press secretary to the Queen, is believed to be the first divorcee to be married by an archbishop of Canterbury in recent times.
Church of England rules state that remarriage of a divorcee whose former spouse is still living is ‘exceptional’. It insists divorcees are asked a series of
‘Progressive opinion’
questions designed to ensure their previous marriage has been fully resolved and ‘past hurts’ have been healed.
The wedding comes 12 years after Dr Welby’s predecessor Rowan Williams refused to let Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles marry in church because of their adulterous history, and because her exhusband was living. Charles’s future role as Supreme Governor of the Church was also considered a factor.
Instead, they had a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall and a prayer service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
Miss Anderson’s wedding did not go entirely smoothly, as Dr Welby momentarily lost the bride’s ring. ‘We looked around for a little while, and saw it had rolled under a chair,’ she told the Sunday Telegraph.
But the archbishop’s involvement – his first wedding since his daughter’s in 2014 – is a symbolic gesture. His parents divorced when he was three and in a sermon last year he said it is ‘important to remember the golden age mythology of stable Victorian values was just that, mythology’.
It is estimated divorcees remarrying account for as many as one in ten church weddings. CofE guidance states: ‘The Church accepts that in exceptional circumstances a divorced person may marry again in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.’ But it warns clergy may refuse to officiate ‘on grounds of conscience’ and divorcees will face questions about their past.
The Rev Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, said the wedding showed ‘the moment you make a concession to progressive opinion, you can find yourself being pushed into radical change’.