The Archbishop of Canterbury has pulled out of a high-profile conference on homosexuality amid fresh evidence that the issue is tearing the Church apart.
Earlier this year, Dr Rowan Williams indicated his willingness to attend the Halfway to Lambeth conference, a major international event being organized by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.
However, it emerged yesterday that he had decided to withdraw a few weeks ago after concerns about the nature of the conference.
Had he attended, he would have been sharing a platform with the American Canon Gene Robinson, Anglicanism's first openly homosexual bishop-elect, and the Rt Rev Michael Ingham, the liberal Bishop of New Westminster in Canada, who has authorized Anglicanism's first homosexual "marriage".
In a carefully worded message of support for the conference, which is taking place at Manchester University in October, Dr Williams said he "very much hopes" it would help promote "honest and constructive" debate.
Lambeth Palace said: "The Archbishop receives many invitations to events, and sadly he cannot fulfill them all."
Meanwhile, fresh infighting broke out in the Church of England after one of its most senior bishops joined criticism of the appointment of Dr Jeffrey John, a prominent gay rights advocate, as the new Bishop of Reading.
The Telegraph disclosed last week that he had been in a homosexual relationship for more than 20 years, although he said he was now sexually abstinent.
The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, told the Church of England Newspaper that the appointment had caused him and many others across the Church "very great concern".
"It is a convenient fiction that it is only evangelicals that are concerned, but it is certainly not the case," said the bishop, a moderate Anglo-Catholic.