The Diocese of Southeast Florida has announced the death of the Rt. Rev. David Emrys Richards on Aug. 21. He was 97, and the senior bishop of the Episcopal Church by order of consecration.
Richards was Bishop of Central America 1957-67; Bishop in Charge of Nicaragua and Honduras, 1967-68; Bishop of Costa Rica, 1967-68; and director of the Office of Pastoral Development from 1969 to 1977.
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Richards was a graduate of Lehigh University and General Theological Seminary. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1945. He was consecrated as Suffragan Bishop of Albany in 1951.
A service of celebration and thanksgiving for Bishop Richards’s life is scheduled for 11 a.m. at St. Philip’s Church, Coral Gables, Florida, and it will be available through Ustream.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
