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Katharine Jefferts Schori was ordained just 12 years before she was elected as the first female leader primate of the US branch of the Anglican church.
A quiet and compassionate woman with a sharp intellect, Jefferts Schori is a member of the Episcopal church's liberal majority and favored the ordination of openly-gay bishop Gene Robinson in 2003 and church blessings for same-sex unions.
While her election Sunday was greeted with cheers and hailed as a victory for women in the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church, conservatives warned it could make it harder for the US church to remain in the 77-million-member worldwide communion.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the religious leader of the church, praised her commitment and "many intellectual and pastoral gifts" but warned that her election "brings into focus some continuing issues in several of our ecumenical dialogues."
Most of the branches of the Anglican Union around the world have resisted elevating women to bishops and oppose homosexuality and many restricted or severed ties to the Episcopal church after it named an openly gay bishop.
Jefferts Schori worked hard to bring about reconciliation with church members who opposed Robinson's ordination, said Reverend Barbara Lewis, who serves as Jefferts Schori's secretary.
Jefferts Schori held workshops to facilitate discussion and understanding and has asked each of Nevada's 35 parishes to come up with its own policy governing the blessing of same-sex unions.
"There was one priest who left the diocese on that issue and a couple families," Lewis told AFP in a telephone interview. "Most of the rest have stayed."
Jefferts Schori, 52, has a doctorate in oceanography and worked with the US National Marine Fisheries Service before becoming ordained in 1994. She is married to a professor of topology and has one daughter who is an officer in the US Air Force.
She is also a pilot and has logged scores of flight hours going to Nevada's most remote parishes to check in on the needs of her parishioners. Several parishioners have won flights with Jefferts Schori as part of fundraising drives, Lewis said.
"She is a very quiet, soft-spoken person. Very insightful," said Lewis, who was on the hiring committee which elected Jefferts Schori to the post of bishop in 2001.
"She is very fair in decision-making. She's very compassionate."
Jefferts Schori, who speaks fluent Spanish, said she brings "different life experience" to the top job of the church, according to the Episcopal News Service.
She expressed a desire "to embrace and celebrate all the diverse cultures, languages, and origins of the many parts of the Episcopal Church-Haiti, Taiwan, Province IX, the churches in Europe, Virgin Islands, as well as the many cultures within the US-First Nations, African-American, Spanish-speaking, Asian, and all Anglo varieties. None is more important than another; all are essential to the transforming work of the body of Christ."
Current Presiding Bishop and Primate Frank Griswold praised her election.
"Bishop Jefferts Schori is a person gifted in mind, heart and spirit, and I am fully confident that the Church and the Communion will be blessed by her ministry in the years ahead," Griswold said in a statement.
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AFP 191840 GMT 06 06
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