September 19, 2011

NEW YORK – The Rev. Canon Andrew Dietsche and the Rev. Canon Petero Sabune have been added to the previously announced slate of five candidates to stand for election as bishop coadjutor for the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

Sabune, 58, the Episcopal Church's Africa partnerships officer, and Dietsche, 57, the New York diocese's canon for pastoral care, were nominated by petition to stand for the election, scheduled for Oct. 29 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.

The other nominees are:

• the Very Rev. Peter Eaton, 53, dean of St. John's Cathedral in Denver, Colorado;

• the Rev. Cathy Hagstrom George, 55, priest-in-charge of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts;

• the Rev. Canon John Harmon, 47, rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.;

• the Very Rev. Tracey Lind, 57, dean of Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio; and

• the Rt. Rev. Pierre Whalon, 58, bishop-in-charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe.

The consecration is scheduled for March 12, 2012, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Seven meetings from Oct. 11-14 will be held for members of the diocese to become acquainted with the nominees.

The Diocese of New York, which includes 203 congregations with about 66,000 worshiping members, extends more than 100 miles from Tottenville, Staten Island, in the south, to rural Callicoon, Sullivan County, in the northwest. Incumbent New York Bishop Mark S. Sisk on Nov. 13, 2010, called for the election of a bishop coadjutor who will eventually succeed him.

According to the Episcopal Church's constitution (Article II, Sec. 1), a bishop diocesan must retire within three years of the consecration of a bishop coadjutor. The mandatory retirement age for Episcopal clergy is 72. Sisk, 68, would reach that age limit on Aug. 18, 2014.

Episcopal News Service