South Sudanese bishop Anthony Poggo has been named as the next Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion.
Bishop Poggo, the former Bishop of Episcopal Church in Kajo-Keji, is currently the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Adviser on Anglican Communion Affairs.
ACNS, the official news service of the worldwide Anglican Communion, reported on Tuesday that Bishop Anthony was selected for his new role by a sub-committee of the Anglican Communion’s Standing Committee following a competitive recruitment process led by external consultants.
He will take up his new role in September, succeeding the Most Revd Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who steps down after next month’s Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, which is being held in Canterbury, Kent, from 26 July to 8 August.
The Anglican Communion is the world’s third-largest Christian denomination. It comprises 42 independent-yet-interdependent autonomous regional, national and pan-national Churches (provinces), active in more than 165 countries.
The Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion leads the staff team at the Anglican Communion Office, the international secretariat serving the four “Instruments of Communion” – sometimes called the “Instruments of Unity”. These are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Lambeth Conference.
Born in 1964, in what is now South Sudan, Bishop Poggo and his siblings were taken by his father – an Anglican priest – and his mother into Uganda to flee the first Sudanese Civil War. In 1973, at the age of nine, he returned with his family to South Sudan.
After graduating from Juba University with a degree in Management and Public Administration, he joined the ecumenical mission agency Scripture Union. While there he felt a need for theological training and gained an MA in Biblical Studies from the Nairobi International School of Theology in Kenya.
He then returned to Uganda to minister to Sudanese refugees with Scripture Union, the Bishop of Kajo-Keji then, the Right Rev Manasseh Binyi Dawidi, who himself was serving the Sudanese refugees in exile in Uganda asked him to consider ordination.
He was ordained a Deacon in 1995 and a Priest in 1996 and continued working for Scripture Union before joining Across, a Christian mission agency working in Sudan from Nairobi, leading the charity’s publishing arm. While there he studied for an MBA in publishing at Oxford Brookes University in England. He rose through the ranks at Across, eventually becoming the Executive Director of the organisation.
In 2007, he was elected Bishop of Kajo-Keji, a position he held until 2016 when he moved to Lambeth Palace to support the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as his Adviser on Anglican Communion Affairs.
“It is a huge privilege to be appointed as the next Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion, taking over from the Most Reverend Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon. His are big shoes to fill,” Bishop Anthony said.
“I would like to thank the Anglican Communion’s Standing Committee for the trust and confidence in appointing me to lead the staff team at the Anglican Communion Office as it undertakes it role in supporting the Instruments of Communion,” he concluded.