THE Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev Richard Harries, will today express support for the new Bishop of Reading, Canon Jeffrey John, the gay-rights bishop whose appointment threatens to split the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

Bishop Harries will call on the Church to unite behind the appointment of Canon John, who has in the past admitted having been in a gay relationship for decades.

The controversy deepened when it was claimed that the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, had congratulated Canon John, when he told him he was in a relationship with another man. During his time at theological college in the 1970s, Dr Hope allegedly told him it would make him “a better human being and a better priest”.

Archbishops around the world are calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to intervene and prevent the consecration of Canon John this year.

Bishop Harries will make clear today that the consecration is not in doubt. Canon John is also being supported privately by Dr Williams who with him founded the liberalising movement Affirming Catholicism.

Canon John, 50, was a student at St Stephen’s House, the Anglo-Catholic theological college in Oxford, when he went to the college principal, Dr Hope, to make his confession. He expected the future Archbishop to ask him to leave. “To my astonishment and joy he congratulated me. He told me I had been a miserable, introverted academic, and that this relationship would make me a better human being and a better priest. He was right, it did. They were the wisest words I ever heard him utter.”

Dr Hope, who has described his own sexuality as a grey area, was in 1974 appointed Principal of St Stephen’s House to restore it to order after allegations of gay antics among the students began circulating in the Church. One former student described it as “like Sodom and Gomorrah”.

Dr Hope was the first senior church official consulted by Canon John when he began his relationship with a man that lasted more than 20 years.

Canon John disclosed his conversation with Dr Hope in a lecture to the Affirming Catholicism Conference and Southwark Chapter of the Society of Catholic Priests in 1998.

Canon John, who, like Dr Williams, is from South Wales, also consulted his diocesan bishop in Wales. He said: “The response was equally kind and supportive. He thanked me for being honest with him and certainly saw no bar to my being ordained. But there was no question of this support and pastoral wisdom being expressed in public. Such truths were to be kept within the Catholic clerical club, where gay relationships were entirely normal and still are.”

Canon John said in the lecture that he had known from an early age that he was gay.

Despite the past admission to a long-term gay relationship, the Bishop of Oxford’s staff are insisting that he is now celibate, in line with the Anglican bishops’ document Issues in Human Sexuality.

From 1995 to 2000 he was a member of the standing committee of the General Synod, the policy body superseded by the Archbishops’ Council.

But his views have already cost him one senior preferment. After he was selected by the appointing committee as principal of a leading theological college, the offer was withdrawn when the diocesan bishop exercised his veto.

Colleagues and former parishioners yesterday defended him. While Vicar of Holy Trinity, Eltham, in the Southwark diocese, from 1991 until his appointment to Southwark Cathedral in 1997, he doubled his congregation to 150 regulars.

The present vicar, the Rev Michael Harrison, is to devote his Pentecost sermon tomorrow to Canon John. He will describe him as “a bearer of the Holy Spirit”. Canon Bruce Saunders, Southwark Cathedral missioner, said: “He is a person of enormous faith, huge integrity, remarkable quality of mind and deep commitment to the Bible.”

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