Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans were preparing Sunday to defect from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent, Sky News reported. It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.

Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate — a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope — to welcome protestant defectors.

Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.

The Church of England said that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes were opposed to the ordination of women.

At St. Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, the parish priest says that a majority of his parishioners want to defect – and he’s considering going too. Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

Yet the priest has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas – a nineteenth-century red-brick church where First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon was baptised.

Read morehere.

Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans were preparing Sunday to defect from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent, Sky News reported. It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.

Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate — a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope — to welcome protestant defectors.

Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.

The Church of England said that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes were opposed to the ordination of women.

At St. Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, the parish priest says that a majority of his parishioners want to defect – and he’s considering going too. Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

Yet the priest has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas – a nineteenth-century red-brick church where First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon was baptised.

Read morehere.