Tragic loss ahead of meeting with Francis

The breakaway Anglican bishop who forged a close friendship with Pope Francis and was due to join the Pope at a meeting in Italy on Monday has died in hospital after his motorcycle was in collision with a car near his home in south-west England, writes Ruth Gledhill.

Tony Palmer, thought to be in his forties, pioneered talks with Pope Francis for the charismatic Evangelical movement, and was to meet him in Caserta with evangelical Revd Giovanni Traettino.

British-born Palmer, who lived with his wife and two children in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, was a bishop of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches. In January this year he recorded a video message from the Pope which he took to a charismatic conference hosted by television evangelist Kenneth Copeland.

Offering his condolences, Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the Vatican’s Christian Unity council,  said Bishop Palmer’s meetings with the Pope had given “great impetus to ecumenical relations between the Catholic Church and evangelical Christians”.