Anglican Diocese of Mthatha

When the Diocese of Grahamstown in the south under Bishop John Armstrong, and Diocese of Natal in the north-east under Bishop John William Colenso were founded, they each included part of an area which in 1872 became the diocese of St John's.[3]

Bishop Henry Callaway was consecrated in Edinburgh in 1873 as the first bishop of the diocese. In Bishop Callaway's new diocese, apart from the mission station he started at Clydesdale, there were five or six other centres of missionary work. The oldest being St Mark's. The first part of Callaway's work was spent trying to find the best way to organise the diocese. The chief problem was to link Clydesdale with the St Mark's group in the south.[4] He first attempted to establish the See at Clydesdale, which was too far north, and then at St Andrew's, not far from Lusikisiki, which turned out to be inaccessible except by sea. He finally settled on a place on the Mthatha River. A town sprang up around the bishop's mission station and Pro-cathedral.[3]

The first Pro-Cathedral of the diocese was built of wood and iron and was also the first church in Mthatha. It could seat a congregation of 250.[5] It was dedicated at the Diocese of St John's second synod on 24 June 1876.[3]

By the turn of the twentieth century a stone-built cathedral had been erected on the top of a hill leading to the administrative and commercial centre of Mthatha. George Fellowes Prynne was the architect and originally designed an impressive looking cathedral. His plan shows a cruciform church, with a nave 147 feet in length, by 36 feet in width, divided into 7 bays. The chancel is 67 feet long by 30 feet wide. The north and south transepts from chapels accommodating 189 and 146 people respectively. East of the chapels are the vestries and organ chamber, the latter being over the clergy vestry, and speaking into the south chapel and chancel.[6] Only the nave was completed, which is the present cathedral of St John the Evangelist.

In 2010 the southern part of the diocese, around Ngcobo and Butterworth, was separated and constituted as the new Diocese of Mbhashe.[7][8]

In 1962, Alphaeus Zulu was Assistant Bishop of St John's.[10]

The diocese assumed arms around the time of its inception, and had them granted by the College of Arms in 1954: Azure, Saint John the Evangelist Argent holding a chalice Or.[11]

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