The first bishop of a special diocese in Great Britain created for Catholics of the Anglican tradition has welcomed the pope's show of support and predicted the fledgling Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will continue growing and strengthening.

MANCHESTER, England -- A prominent Anglican bishop has joined the Catholic Church and will be ordained as a priest at the end of October.

TORONTO - As hopeful Anglo-Catholic parishes across Canada completed two months of catechetical study Dec. 18, dreams of a Canadian Catholic ordinariate for ex-Anglicans are fading.
"We had hoped, of course, we would have our own Canadian ordinariate, but we realize our numbers may not warrant it," Bishop Carl Reid, Anglican Catholic Church of Canada auxiliary bishop, told The Catholic Register.

An American Anglican ordinariate will be inaugurated Jan. 1. About 2,000 former Episcopalians (as Anglicans are known in the United States) have asked to be received into the Catholic Church through provisions of the Anglicanorum Coetibus apostolic constitution.

The number of Canadian break-away Anglicans seeking a place in the Catholic Church has declined in the two years since Pope Benedict XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, an apostolic constitution intended to provide for groups of Anglicans entering the Catholic Church but retaining significant elements of Anglican liturgy.

The main body that had been seeking union with the Catholic Church, the 28 parishes of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, split into two non-geographical dioceses Nov. 26. The pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham contains parishes still engaged in the process for entering the Catholic Church. The remaining parishes in the diocese of Canada are taking a wait-and-see approach to the process, said Reid.
Substantial numbers of ACCC members have also left the Church as the prospect of joining a Catholic entity has taken shape.

"A number of our people who weren't clear when they joined us of our intention to seek unity — even though it is in our foundational documents, our constitution — when unity became not only a possibility but a reality they just sort of left," said Reid. "That reduced our numbers from what they were two years ago."

ACCC members in the pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham understand that a handful of parishes, averaging between 20 and 30 members and spread across the country, can't justify a bishop and diocesan structure involved in an ordinariate, said Reid. They are waiting for word on just how they will be accommodated, he said.

Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, in charge of guiding the process in Canada, declined to comment.

"There are still some key details being worked out right now and, as you can imagine, this is a sensitive file," said archdiocese of Toronto spokesman Neil MacCarthy in an e-mail.

Among the issues being worked out are the final resting place of ACCC clergy. Where 67 Anglican priests in the United States have submitted dossiers seeking Catholic ordination and 35 have received a nulla osta, or initial approval, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, none of the Canadian Anglican clergy who have applied have heard back from Rome.

"We're clearly further behind in the process than the Americans and the Australians," said Reid.

Without clergy, Anglican parishes accepted into the Catholic Church can't function, said the bishop.

Despite difficulties and uncertainty, the Our Lady of Walsingham Anglican Catholics remain hopeful, Reid said.

"Our people fully understand the divine mandate expressed by our Lord in John 17 'That they may be one.' And that's what's driving this whole process," he said. "Our remaining people here at the Cathedral (of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ottawa) are committed to the process and understand the importance from the perspective of what God's wish is, not what ours is."