ANGER has surrounded the appointment of Britain's first divorced bishop in North Wales.
The Church in Wales announced Anthony Crockett, 58, is to become the 80th Bishop of Bangor after a drawn-out selection process.
The Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Barry Morgan, said yesterday the present Archdeacon of Carmarthen was the unanimous choice of the church's Bench of Bishops.
But some clergy in the diocese last night claimed their wishes had been ignored in both the appointment and the way it was made.
The Rector of Pennal the Rev Geraint ap Iorwerth, said: "There will be some who will stay away from his ordination and installation, very definitely.
"This is the first time a bishop has been chosen like this, and many feel the bench of bishops should have been more sensitive."
For the first time in the history of the Church in Wales, an electoral college failed to agree on a choice by the required two-thirds majority when it convened behind closed doors in Bangor cathedral for three days in March.
The bench of bishops was then asked to make the appointment.
Mr Crockett told a news conference in Cardiff his first marriage had ended in separation in 1985 and was dissolved five years later.
He asked his present wife Caroline, who is now undertaking theological training in Cardiff, to marry him in 1999, some 14 years after his first marriage broke down.
"Everyone who has been through a divorce would wish it had turned out otherwise," he said.
"When a cleric goes through experiences like that they are changed by them. I never dreamed 20 years ago that would happen to me.
"The Church has come to terms with divorce and sees it as the huge pastoral problem that it is."
The Governing Body of the Church in Wales finally agreed to the remarriage and ordination of divorcees after a divisive and acrimonious debate in 1998.
Mr Crockett will be the first bishop in Wales who has been divorced, while the Church of England and Episcopal Church in Scotland said yesterday that neither had appointed a divorcee to head a diocese.
Archbishop Barry Morgan said the appointment was in accord with the Church's view on divorce.
"At the end of the process, the Bench of Bishops were unanimous in believing that Archdeacon Anthony Crockett was the person who best fitted the requirements to be the next Bishop of Bangor," he said.