Traditional Anglican Communion suspends [Archbishop and Primate] John Hepworth
CWN – May 22, 2012
The Traditional Anglican Communion has suspended Archbishop John Hepworth, the Anglican prelate whose desire for full communion with the Holy See helped occasion Pope Benedict’s 2009 apostolic constitution on Anglican ordinariates.
Hepworth, a former Catholic priest who subsequently married, divorced, and remarried, served as primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion from 2002 until March 2012. Because of the suspension, he is now no longer the traditional Anglican bishop ordinary of Australia. [As a "cradle" Catholic and ex-priest, the only status that he could be (and was) offered was laicization, which he refused and instead tried to continue as a "bishop" in his breakaway Anglican church.]
Hepworth’s suspension follows the resignation of Peter Slipper, a priest of the Traditional Anglican Communion, as speaker of the Australian House of Representatives, amid allegations of financial impropriety and sexual harassment.
Additional sources for this story: See www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=14370