Robert Duncan (bishop) - Archbishop of ACNA

Archbishop of ACNA

On June 21, 2009 the bishops of the Anglican Church in North America elected Duncan the Archbishop and Primate of North America. He was installed on June 25, 2009 at Christ Church in Plano, Texas. At the ceremony, conservative Anglicans in the developing world were represented by the Most Rev. Benjamin Nzimbi, the Archbishop of the African Anglican Province of Kenya. Kenya was one of nine provinces of the Anglican Communion that sent representatives to the ACNA conference. Duncan stated that his role as archbishop was to "reunite a significant portion of our Anglican Church family here in North America" and indicated that he intended to serve for five years before stepping down.

In October 2009, Duncan reacted to the Roman Catholic Church's proposed creation of personal ordinariates for disaffected traditionalist Anglicans by saying that although he felt that this provision would probably not be utilized by the great majority of ACNA's affiliated laity and clergy, he would happily bless those who were drawn to participate in this historic offer.

At the Provincial Council of the ACNA, held at Long Beach, California, on 21 June 2011, Archbishop Duncan made a positive balance of the first two years of the church: "According to the data submitted in the Annual Parochial Reports there were, in the year 2010, 987 baptisms of adults over thirty, 424 baptisms of young people aged sixteen to thirty, and 1647 baptisms of children in the ACNA dioceses, not including the congregations of our Ministry Partners. What is so stunning about this data is that the number of baptisms of those 16 and older is almost equal to the number of children baptized. What this says is that we are reaching adolescents and adults who have never known Christ, never been part of a church. This is to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, one sign among many that something quite extraordinary is unfolding."

Duncan was one of the signatories of the statement of the Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania, an organization representing 26 denominations, on 13 April 2012, expressly supporting the Roman Catholic Church in its opposition to the HHS mandate that would force Roman Catholic hospitals in the United States to pay for birth control methods not in accordance with the doctrine of the church. Also among the signatories was Bishop Kenneth L. Price, his successor at the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

He attended, with Bishop Ray Sutton, a public audience in the Vatican, at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI, on 28 November 2012, whom they met and greeted particularly afterwards, on behalf of the Anglican Church in North America and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.