Thus, today we are conscious that while primatial ministry is personal, it is also collegial, a ministry that is exercised as first amongst equals, in unity with others. A Primate is also the link person with the other provinces of the Anglican Communion, and particularly those of this immediate region. I am very grateful to colleagues from New Zealand, New Guinea, Melanesia, Myanmar, South East Asia, Hong Kong, and representatives of the Primates of Japan, the Philippines and the USA for taking the trouble to come today from so far away to remind us of our greater international belonging. Written expressions of support have come from Korea, Sri Lanka, India and Southern Africa. Since the recent international Primates' meeting in Portugal I count them already to be friends, and we are acutely conscious of our mutual interdependence, and of our responsibilities and obligations to one another in an international communion of Churches.
Primatial ministry is personal, it is collegial.
By now those of you who know the 1982 Lima Report on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches will have dropped to the fact that I am working with its threefold categorisation of ordained ministry, and especially today episcopal ministry as personal, collegial, and, finally, communal. For the ministry of a bishop, including the bishop in a primatial role, is not just personal and collegial but exercised in relation to the whole community of the Church, Bishops, Clergy and People together, as the whole people of God in their mission and ministry to the wider community of society as a whole. As we relate to Australian society as a whole, all Churches at present have a clear evangelistic task to do to connect and re-connect with vast numbers of increasingly secularised Australians with whom we have lost touch. In the context of the tragic brokenness of the present world we also have responsibilities to foster dialogue with other faiths. We Christians certainly know that we have to look at ourselves and what we have to offer, how we are performing, and how we can better work together.