The Bishop of Bangor is the Ordinary of the Church in Wales Diocese of Bangor. The diocese covers the counties of Anglesey, most of Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire and a small part of Montgomeryshire. The see is in the city of Bangor where the seat is located at Cathedral Church of Saint Deiniol.
The diocese in the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was founded around 546 by Saint Deiniol, and with the rest of Wales, initially resisted the papal mission of St Augustine in Britain. In 1534, the church in England and Wales broke allegiance with the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England. After a brief restoration with the Holy See during the reign of Queen Mary I, the diocese remained part of the Anglican Province of Canterbury until the early 20th century. Following the Welsh Church Act 1914, the Welsh dioceses formed the independent Church in Wales within the Anglican Communion on 31 March 1920.
The current incumbent is Right Reverend Andrew John, Bishop of Bangor, who was consecrated on 29 November 2008 and enthroned on 24 January 2009. The Bishop's residence is Ty'r Esgob ("Bishop's House") in Bangor.
Famous quotes containing the words bishop and/or bangor:
“Passing through here in 1795, Bishop Asbury commented, ‘The country improves in cultivation, wickedness, mills, and stills.’ Five years later, he held a meeting in the neighborhood and remarked that he thought most of the congregation had come to look at his wig.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It was a tangled and perplexing thicket, through which we stumbled and threaded our way, and when we had finished a mile of it, our starting-point seemed far away. We were glad that we had not got to walk to Bangor along the banks of this river, which would be a journey of more than a hundred miles. Think of the denseness of the forest, the fallen trees and rocks, the windings of the river, the streams emptying in, and the frequent swamps to be crossed. It made you shudder.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)