[Anglican Communion News Service] Bishop of New Westminster Melissa Skelton has been elected as archbishop and metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia and Yukon. She will continue in her role as bishop of New Westminster while taking on responsibility for the internal province. She is the first woman to be elected an archbishop in the Anglican Church of Canada and only the second within the Anglican Communion. Skelton Earlier this year Bishop Kay Goldworthy was elected as Archbishop of Perth in the Anglican Church of Australia. Each are responsible for internal provinces, and so are not primates.

There has been a female primate in the Anglican Communion: Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori became the first – and so far only – female primate when she was elected as presiding bishop of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church in 2006, a role she held until her her term expired in 2015.

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Editor’s note: Skelton was rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, and canon for congregational development and leadership in the Diocese of Olympia when she was elected bishop of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster by a special synod in late 2013.