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Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie (October 2, 1921 – July 11, 2000) was the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980 to 1991.

He was born and spent his early life in Great Crosby, Liverpool. He initially attended St Luke's Church, Crosby (where he was confirmed in 1936), before switching to St Faith's Church about a mile down the road. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby before going up to Brasenose College, Oxford. During World War II, he served as a tank commander in the Scots Guards, earning the Military Cross.

During his time in the key Anglican position, he witnessed a breaking down of the historic connections between the Conservative Party and the Church of England, which had often been described as "the Tory party at prayer". This was due mainly to Margaret Thatcher's support for the ethos of individualism and money-making, and her claim that "there is no such thing as society", which many in the Anglican church thought was uncaring and anti-Christian (ironically, Mrs Thatcher had been brought up in the Methodist Church, a branch of Christianity which had previously been associated with socialism and the Labour Party, especially in South Wales where the strong culture of Methodist chapels had been a factor in the disestablishment of the Anglican church).

In 1981, he officiated at the marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer, despite suspecting privately that they were ill-suited and that their marriage would not last.

With a dramatic gesture of goodwill, he knelt in prayer with Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral of Canterbury during John Paul's visit to Great Britain in 1982.

In 1985, there was strong friction between the Church of England and the Conservative Government, in particular Norman Tebbit, over the Church's report "Faith in the City", which criticised the government's handling of social problems in British inner-city areas. As a result of this, Tebbit became a strong supporter of the disestablishment of the Church of England, claiming that institutions affiliated to the British State should not express what he saw as overtly partisan political views.

When Runcie visited the Pope in 1989, he set out to reconcile the Church of England with the Church of Rome. Runcie advocated the Papacy as having a 'primacy of honour' rather than 'primacy of jurisdiction' over the Anglican church. The Pope did not go along with this, however, claiming that the Papacy already has primacy of jurisdiction over all other churches regardless of whether or not this is officially recognised and also that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church would not change to accommodate Runcie's proposals.

When he retired as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was created a life peer, as Baron Runcie, of Cuddesdon in the County of Oxfordshire, enabling him to remain in the House of Lords where he had previously sat as a Lord Spiritual. He died of cancer in 2000.

Lord Runcie's wife, Rosalind, whom he married on 5 September 1957, was well-known as a pianist.

Quotation

In the postscript of Humphrey Carpenter's biography:

I have done my best to die before this book is published.

References

• Carpenter, Humphrey, Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop. Hodder & Stoughton, 1996. ISBN 0-340-57107-1.

See also

• Richard Chartres, Runcie's Chaplain at St Albans
• Terry Waite, the Archbishop's Assistant for Anglian Communion Affairs

External links

• Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

• 1921 births
• 2000 deaths
• Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• Archbishops of Canterbury
• Life peers
• Former students of Brasenose College, Oxford
• Natives of Sefton
• Recipients of the Royal Victorian Chain