CANTERBURY, England – Anti-Semitism is “deeply embedded” in British culture, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said.

CANTERBURY, England - Labelling people who are worried about mass migration into their country as racist is “absolutely outrageous,” Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby wrote in The House, a magazine read mainly by members of Parliament.

A proposal to loosen the ties of the bitterly divided Anglican Communion drew mostly favourable reactions in Britain, while African prelates said they needed time to study the matter.

For all the talk about global warming what we’re now seeing is a freezing trend that’s producing an ice sheet over Satan’s lake of fire. We know this is happening because events long thought possible only when the underworld’s climate turned entirely upside down — when hell froze over — have become the order of the day.

CANTERBURY, England - Tens of thousands of people in Leicester — England’s most religiously diverse city — are getting ready to honour the memory of a long-despised English king with a ceremony that testifies to the already warm relationship between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis and Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, pledged to support each other with their prayers and to continue the search for full unity between their communities.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - The newly appointed leader of the world’s Anglicans is a former oil executive who said his spiritual director was a Catholic monk.

Bishop Justin Welby of Durham, who will become the new archbishop of Canterbury, did not name the monk, but told a Nov. 9 news conference at London’s Lambeth Palace that he was influenced by both Benedictine and Ignatian spirituality. He also told reporters that he would be voting in favour of the ordination of women as bishops when the General Synod will decide the matter at a two-day meeting beginning Nov. 19.

Welby’s appointment as the primate of England and the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion was announced Nov. 9 following selection by the Crown Nominations Commission and approval of Queen Elizabeth II, the supreme governor of the Church of England. The 56-year-old will be enthroned as the 105th archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral March 21 in succession to Archbishop Rowan Williams, who leaves the post in December.

Welby has been described as an Anglican evangelical with sympathy for the Catholic tradition. A Nov. 9 press release by the Church of England said he has “frequently said that the Roman Catholic approach to Christian social teaching, beginning with the encyclical of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, up to Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas Veritate, has greatly influenced his social thinking.”

Welby told the Lambeth press conference he knew the Church of England was “facing very hard issues.” 

“In 10 days or so the General Synod will vote on the ordination of women as bishops, and I will be voting in favour and join my voice in urging the synod to go forward with this change,” he said.

The archbishop-designate also noted that the Anglican Communion was divided over issues of sexuality but said that it would be wrong to tolerate “any form of homophobia in any part of the church.”