Wilfrid Gore Browne - Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman

Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman

Promotion to the Episcopate came in 1912 following his election as the first Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman, a vast, newly established diocese, 305,000 square miles (790,000 km2) in extent, carved out of the existing Diocese of Bloemfontein, with a portion from the Diocese of Cape Town, and half of Bechuanaland Protectorate which had until then been administered as part of the Diocese of Mashonaland (Southern Rhodesia). He was Consecrated at Bloemfontein Cathedral on 29 June 1912. "The brilliant copes and mitres of the consecrating bishops, the banners, crosses, pastoral staffs, the music of trumpet and organ, gave a glorious feeling of preparation for warfare. It was the Church Militant in South Africa gathered around a new commander, to invest him with its authority, to equip him for his command." He was enthroned at St Cyprian's Cathedral in Kimberley in a similarly impressive service the following day, 30 June 1912. Soon the work organising the new diocese was presenting immense difficulties. His Dean, T.C. Robson was away ill, leaving the cathedral in his hands. "Native work" needed to be developed but there were no funds. With the outbreak of war in 1914 the Kimberley mines were shut down, causing huge loss of jobs; further afield in the diocese "droughts seemed almost continuous" and "poverty irremediable."

Gore Browne raised funds for the Diocese on return visits to England. He was also able to recruit new clergy who numbered only 22 in 1912. In 1916 there were ten "native" clergy and more than this number by the end of the 1920s. "To train natives for the ministry seemed to the bishop ... to be the most necessary work of the diocese." Gore Browne also opened new parishes and districts and saw to the building new churches such as at Batlharos.

During sixteen years in Kimberley and Kuruman Bishop Gore Browne is recorded as having visited and ministered in every part of his far-flung diocese (which has since shrunk, no longer including the enormous area which is now the southern half of Botswana). "He spared himself nothing on his long treks," the Church Times obituary notes, "often having to walk for hours through deep sand when his motor stuck." There were parts that could be reached only by ox wagon. Gore Browne is well known for the special ministry he developed to the migrant workers and convicts on the mines in Kimberley, amongst whom he was "trusted and greatly loved and respected".

Bishop Wilfrid Gore Browne died unexpectedly following emergency surgery at Kimberley Hospital on 15 March 1928.