The Rt. Rev. Gilbert Rateloson Rakotondravelo, Bishop of Fianarantsoa, was elected as the Province of the Indian Ocean’s seventh primate and archbishop by the provincial synod on December 14.
He succeeds Archbishop James Wong, who has led the province of eight dioceses in Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion, and the Comoros, since 2017. The province, also known as the Anglican Church of the Indian Ocean, has about 505,000 members.
In 2003, Rakotondravelo was consecrated as the founding bishop of the Diocese of Finarantsoa, the largest city in Southern Madagascar. He has been an important leader in the dramatic growth that the province has experienced in Madagascar in recent decades. An important recent milestone in his ministry was the building and dedication of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Finarantsoa in 2018.
He is the second Malagasy to serve as primate. Archbishop Remi Rabenirina led the province from 1995 to 2005. Archbishop Rakotondravelo will serve a renewable term of five years in his new role, while also remaining a diocesan bishop.
Wong, who stepped down as primate because he will turn 65 next year, has been an important leader in Anglican realignment. He served a term as the vice chair of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), and was among the group’s primary spokesmen at the Lambeth Conference.
He was a regular participant in the Primates’ Meeting through most of his ministry, though he joined the other officers of the GSFA Primates’ Council in staying away from last spring’s meeting in Rome, in protest of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s complicity in the Church of England’s decision to allow the blessing of same-sex unions.
The bishops of the province also participated in the GAFCON gathering in Kigali in 2023, and some attended earlier GAFCON events. The church has initiated the process to become a full member of the GSFA. In February 2023, it issued a statement reiterating its traditional stance on human sexuality and saying that it was saddened by the Church of England’s decision to allow the blessing of same-sex unions.
It also made headlines recently by electing the Very Rev. Darrell Critch, a Canadian priest of the Anglican Church in North America, to serve as Bishop of Mahajanga, a missionary diocese in Northwestern Madagascar. Critch was consecrated on December 15.
The province, like many smaller and more Anglo-Catholic Anglican churches in the Global South, has remained committed to the Canterbury-based Instruments of Communion. It sends delegates to the Anglican Consultative Council and a full contingent of its bishops attended the 2022 Lambeth Conference. Its former primate, the Most Rev. Ian Ernest, will retire next month as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s personal representative to the Holy See and director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.
The province’s 1973 constitution, written when it became independent of the Church of England, describes it as “being in full communion with the Church of England and the Anglican Communion throughout the world,” a definition that has been tested by more recent disagreements.
Anglican mission in the region dates back to 1810, when England seized Mauritius from France during the Napoleonic Wars. The islands were served by both high-church and evangelical mission societies, a rarity during the colonial period. Mission in the islands of Reunion and the Comoros, which were never ruled by the British, has begun only in recent years, and the Anglican presence there is very small.
A majority of the population is Christian in Madagascar, Reunion, and Seychelles; while Mauritius, which was heavily settled with Indian indentured laborers during the colonial period, is the only African country where Hinduism is the most popular faith. The Comoros is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, with Christians making up less than 2 percent of the population.
In all of the islands, which were first within the French colonial orbit, Roman Catholicism is by far the largest church. Reunion Island remains a French overseas department, while the other island nations have been independent for several generations. French is an official language in all of the nations served by the province, and is used for official church business and as a language for worship, alongside English and several local languages.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.