Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the retired Anglican Bishop of Rochester, has been received into the Catholic Church and hopes to be ordained a Catholic priest, to serve in the Anglican ordinariate.

Born in Pakistan, Bishop Nazir-Ali was Bishop of Rochester from 1994 to 2009, and was once considered a likely candidate to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Although usually identified with the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, he explained his conversion in terms of a desire to maintain the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He said: “I believe that the Anglican desire to adhere to apostolic, patristic, and conciliar teaching can now best be maintained in the Ordinariate.”

Twelve Anglican bishops have now entered the Catholic Church in the last 20 years. Because he is married, Nazir-Ali, who is 72 years old, cannot be considered for ordination as a Catholic bishop.