Lambeth Conference: Archbishop of Canterbury wishes he wasn't here

From The Telegraph (UK):

By Martin Beckford

We've just enjoyed another installment in the farce of the Lambeth Conference delegates list.

The issue of who was coming has been rumbling on all year, ever since conservative bishops announced they were going to boycott the event and organise their own little get-together in Jerusalem instead.

At the start of the conference, press were told how many bishops had arrived but in a departure from tradition, we were not told their names.

On Tuesday morning this was put down to security issues as there were fears for the safety of a handful of African bishops who had defied the boycott ordered by their Primates.

We were told, however, that a Nigerian bishop was represented only by fax, as he hadn’t arrived as expected.

But by that lunchtime it had become a privacy issue, with the Primate of Australia citing “privacy law” as the reason why we couldn’t find out who was in and who was out. At that time we didn’t know Britain had a privacy law – perhaps he had had a sneak preview of Mr Justice Eady’s ruling in the Max Mosley case.

The following day it had changed again, and the ever-reliable Data Protection Act was being cited as the reason why it was not possible to name the public figures who were attending a very public conference to represent their parishioners.

Conference organisers went round every bishop in their “indaba” discussion groups asking if they would mind being identified to the press so a list of consenting attendees could be compiled. But of course this would not include those who had just failed to make it to their session that morning, not just the publicity-shy ones.

Today we finally received the long-awaited document - 12 typed pages of names and dioceses in no particular order, some underlined, some crossed-out and some with ticks next to them for no discernible reason.

The information-hungry hacks scoured the list for unexpected attendees, such as a cache of hidden Ugandans. But instead the all-knowing George Conger, of the Church of England Newspaper, spotted a notable absentee. The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the entire 80 million-strong Anglican Communion, is not on the official list of attendees at the Lambeth Conference.