The planned changes in church law would give Dr Rowan Williams the power to intervene in the affairs of churches outside England for the first time since the Church was established by Henry VIII.

The proposals, which would have to be agreed by the Church’s separate provinces, have already aroused suspicions that they will turn the Archbishop into an Anglican version of the Pope.

The powers are proposed in a legal document presented to the 37 Anglican primates who met at Lambeth Palace last week to attempt to resolve the crisis over same-sex blessings in Canada and the election of a gay bishop in America.

At present, the Archbishop of Canterbury is primus inter pares, first among equals, of the Anglican primates, with moral authority but no juridical authority over his fellows.

The new proposals could lead to some juridical authority being granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to his fellow primates, through the legal adoption of mutually agreed ius commune, common law, into the canon law of individual Anglican provinces.

The paper emphasises that any new powers would be used only in exceptional circumstances. “There is no hidden aggrandisement policy on the part of the Archbishop and his advisers,” a senior source said. “But the present divisions are acute and need to be addressed urgently.”

The new role will be worked out by the commission Dr Williams agreed to set up last week “to consider his own role in maintaining communion within and between provinces when grave difficulties arise”.

According to the paper presented to the primates, the aim would be to give the Archbishop of Canterbury power to intervene in the internal affairs of another province “for the sake of maintaining communion within the said province and between the said province and the rest of the Anglican Communion”.

The author, a senior canon lawyer, cites the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution which called for a commission to be set up to work out when it would be appropriate for the Archbishop to exercise “an extraordinary ministry of episcope (pastoral oversight), support and reconciliation with regard to the internal affairs of a province other than his own”.

In the paper he writes: “To date, no such commission has been established, and it is possible that this may be one of the reasons why provinces and individual primates may have been tempted to take the law into their own hands.”

He advises the primates: “The present meeting might wish to revisit that proposal of the bishops in 1998, and invite the new Archbishop of Canterbury to take that particular proposal of the 1998 conference further.”

According to legal advice obtained from a senior canon lawyer by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, the plans could mark the demise of the present structure of the Anglican Communion.

In an advice note to the movement, he wrote: “The recent meeting of the primates over the question of homosexuality has raised a spectre of converging Anglican common law. We wait with bated breath for the report of the canonists on current issues which will no doubt be an attempt to formulate a common doctrine on sexuality.”

Martin Reynolds, communications director of the movement and a priest in the Church in Wales, said the proposals were startling and would give the Archbishop enhanced powers similar to those of the Pope. “They are looking to have an Anglican version of the Holy Office and a Magisterium,” he said. “They won’t call the Archbishop of Canterbury a Pope but that is what he will be. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.”

Canon John Rees, Joint Registrar of the Province of Canterbury, who has been involved with the new Network of Legal Advisers set up by the Anglican Consultative Council at its meeting in Hong Kong in 2002, said the intention was not to create an Anglican Pope.

“My hunch would be that the Anglican Communion, having such a heavy emphasis on provincial autonomy, would have little or no stomach for that sort of supra-provincial structure.”

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