Archbishop’s Plea For Tolerance

Church discrimination against women and gay people must end, the Archbishop of Wales has said in his Easter message. The Anglican church in Wales’ leader warned the church has become a place where gay people feel marginalised and women do not have equality with men.

The message comes as a Cardiff tribunal heard the Church of England’s Hereford diocese deny discrimination against a gay man turned down for a post.

Dr Morgan said gay people in the church felt “increasingly isolated”.

He said: “For Jesus there were no prior conditions for being accepted by God whatever your sex, status or position.

“But we still live in a church where it is not possible for women to be bishops.

“And in a church, too, where most worshippers are women but all the major committees and councils of most dioceses and province are run by men and in a communion where gay people feel increasingly isolated and marginalised and even persecuted.”

Dr Morgan, who will preach at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff on Easter Sunday, also called for an end to child labour, sex trafficking and homelessness.

He added: “We may this year be celebrating the bicentenary of the end of slavery, but sexual trafficking in young people and women is still rife in this country.

“Foreign nationals are often forced to live on the poverty line because their employers take back for their keep the little they pay them in wages.”

Dr Morgan’s message on tolerance for gay people comes at the same time as a Church of England bishop has denied in a tribunal unlawfully discriminating against a gay man turned down for a post within his diocese.

The Bishop of Hereford, Rt Revd Anthony Priddis, has told the ongoing hearing in Cardiff he was complying with church teachings when he decided not to give John Reaney, from Llandudno, a job as youth worker.

Mr Reaney, 41, claims being openly gay cost him the job.