The divine troubleshooter

Archbishop Robin Eames is pivotal in handling the crisis in the global Anglican community over gay issues. He talks to Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Robin Eames, the Archbishop of Armagh, has been described as the divine troubleshooter of worldwide Anglicanism. More than once he has been called on to help prevent what many had predicted would be an inevitable schism. It happened over women priests, now it is happening again over the church's attitude to homosexuality.

He has long been a bridge-builder both inside and outside the church. In the late 1970s, when he was bishop of Derry and Raphoe, he had behind-the-scenes dealings with republican paramilitaries, according to a biography published this week. He also helped in the preparation of the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, drafting passages that dealt with changes in the Irish Constitution, to reflect the principle of consent in Northern Ireland. He was also pivotal in events leading up to the loyalists' 1994 ceasefire, particularly their expression of regret for the misery they had caused.

Now, as he prepares to host the next meeting of his 37 fellow Anglican primates, in the North in February, he is helping the broad Anglican community find a way to balance the attitudes of some of its North American members, whose liberalism has seen them consecrate an openly gay bishop and bless same-sex unions, with those of its more traditional clergy, who are appalled at what they regard as an abandonment of core Christian values.

Dr Eames, who is Ireland's longest-serving senior churchman (he became Church of Ireland Primate of All Ireland in 1986), seems hopeful. He says he is not at all depressed by initial reaction to last month's publication of the Windsor Report, the Anglican response, under his chairmanship of the Lambeth Commission on Communion, to two controversies: one was prompted by the consecration in New Hampshire of Gene Robinson, a divorced father of two who has lived with his male partner for more than a decade, the other by the decision of the Canadian diocese of New Westminster to approve a same-sex blessing rite.

The report recommended that those who took part in Robinson's consecration in the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA), a year ago, should withdraw from their representative roles within the Anglican Communion until they apologise. It also asked the North Americans to take no further action on their same-sex decisions. In return, their opponents should express regret for their interference by denouncing the same-sex decisions of other provinces, affirm their desire to remain in the Anglican Communion and make no more interventions.

Widely seen as an attempt to avert a split, the report bought valuable time for emotions to settle before the February meeting. Frank Griswold, who as presiding bishop of ECUSA consecrated Robinson, expressed his regret for the effect of his decision but did not apologise. The chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa and Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, said the report failed "to confront the reality that a small, economically privileged group of people has sought to subvert the Christian faith and impose their new and false doctrine on the wider community of faith", but he welcomed the sincerity and hard work of its writers.

Dr Eames is keen to stress "so much that was positive" in their reactions. He believes that the North American churches are gradually realising how much damage their decisions did to the international Communion. More time is needed by all parties, he says.

He believes the crisis generated by the issue has been "a coming of age" for the worldwide Anglican Communion. It has been made to realise that the old colonial, Church of England-based model of church, which sent out clergy and money, has given way to a more interdependent Communion. He believes that the centre of the Anglican Communion has shifted from the north-west to the global south, in particular to the sub-Saharan African region where it is growing rapidly. There people feel increasingly they are carrying "the real banner of Christianity" and regard the north-west as having "lost the thrust of gospel", he says.

Secularism is "so foreign to the African experience", he points out. What was an inter-cultural crisis has been brought to breaking point by the same-sex crisis but he is not certain the North American church fully realises this.

He agrees that differences among Ireland's 12 Church of Ireland bishops on same-sex issues fall generally along geographic lines, with those in "the north-west" (Armagh Province) mainly favouring the traditional view while those in the "south-east" (Dublin Province) are of a more liberal hue. But he strongly disputes descriptions of the bishops as a house divided. He has "never known a period when there was such openness and trust between colleagues".

On gay marriage, Dr Eames says he remains comfortable with the 1.10 resolution on human sexuality of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, at which Anglican primates asserted, as the norm, marriage between a man and a woman, while they rejected homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture. It also committed them to listening to the experience of homosexuals and called for pastoral sensitivity to their situation. He has "no time or patience with homophobia".

As to his chairing of major international Anglican Commissions, he acknowledges a pattern of attempting - successfully to date - to keep together seemingly irreconcilables. He says that, whether dealing within a family context, with the strife of Northern Ireland, or in his work with the wider Anglican Communion, "I try to interpret the God of reconciliation". He has "never seen reconciliation succeed when imposed". He has seen reconciliation "where people thought it important to be reconciled".

Robert Henry Alexander Eames was born in Belfast on April 27th, 1937. He is the only son of the Rev William Eames, a Methodist minister who was born in Cork and brought up in Dublin, and Mary Alexander, from east Belfast, whose father was the unionist MP Robert Alexander. Later, as a minister in the North, William Eames joined the Orange Order, becoming a county grand chaplain. Eventually, he moved to the Church of Ireland.

Four years after the archbishop's birth, his sister, Marion, was born. He says his upbringing gave him a typical Protestant grammar school background. He studied law at Queen's University Belfast - an environment, he says, that changed him, as he encountered Catholics who remain friends of his to this day.

Convinced of his vocation to ministry in the Church of Ireland, he went to the Divinity School at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1960 and was ordained priest in 1964. He served in Northern parishes before becoming Bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1975, then Bishop of Down and Dromore in 1980. In 1986, at the age of 49, he became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland. He is married with two sons and five grandchildren.

The latter years of his primacy have been dominated by the issue of Drumcree, which he has described as his "Calvary". But he observes that recent years suggest "patient involvement has been justified". The recent comparative calm at Drumcree is not due to weariness, he believes, but to a realisation that things have moved on. But still, hardly a week goes by without him having to deal with a Drumcree-related matter, he adds.

As to his retirement - recently being speculated about - he has "not yet set a date". He is entitled to continue until he is 75, in 2012. When the day comes he will say of his successor "may God bless him . . . or her!" He does not foresee the appointment of an Irish woman bishop just yet - although he would approve.

The Biography of Archbishop Eames, Nobody's Fool, by Alf McCreary, Hodder & Stoughton, €30, is published on Thursday

On Charles Haughey "I found him affable and easy to talk to . . . He was quiet-spoken and cultured . . . Of all the taoisigh I met he was the hardest to predict. I never felt totally at ease with him . . . He did achieve a great deal, but because of other things that emerged later people tended to lose sight of his achievements."

On Garret FitzGerald "My memory of FitzGerald was that of his highly intellectual approach, even to the extent of seeming more at home in an academic atmosphere than in the office of taoiseach. He had a sense of history and approached the North with a refreshing honesty."

On Albert Reynolds "Albert and I got on like a house on fire, and I did not know

that this would be the case until I met him. . . . I also got to know his wife well. I had

a real regard for Reynolds. He was an entrepreneur but also a consummate politician."

On Bertie Ahern (right) "I liked Bertie Ahern. He was well versed in Northern Ireland matters, and in dealing with him in the Irish

Republic he was most sympathetic to the Church of Ireland."

On Margaret Thatcher "She did not appear to have a great deal of sensitivity, and I really did not warm to her. I think she saw Northern

Ireland in terms of breaking the Provisional IRA. . . . I asked myself if there was any room in her philosophy where she was willing to address the causes of the alienation in society which was helping to create the terrorists of tomorrow."

On John Major "He was not only one

of the most reliable but also one of the best informed prime ministers on

Northern Ireland affairs. The cartoonist's image of the grey man was most unfair. I knew from my dealings with him that he was neither weak nor dilatory."

On Tony Blair (left) "He asked us [ at a first meeting with Northern church leaders], 'What can you do for me?'. . . and seemed disappointed when we did not have a clear-cut response . . . Tony Blair was known to have had a poor regard for our [ church] leadership at that point, but he was a quick learner, and later on the relationship improved greatly."

On Seán Brady, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh "He is a quiet, sincere and humble man . . . My time with him on the opposite hill has been a period of trust, mutual respect and warmth when I have presumed to feel that I could assist him as he came to terms with his new appointment."