Ben Bano’s otherwise excellent article on Anglican orders (“Unsettled orders”, 25 September) omits one important element. As he points out, Leo XIII’s condemnation in Apostolicae Curae was based on the perceived defective intention of the 1552 ordinal used in England, and on the fact that by the time a more acceptable ordinal was introduced in 1662 the valid succession had died out.

But by the Bonn Concordat of 1931 the Church of England entered into full communion with the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht. Thereafter Old Catholic bishops – whose orders were recognised by Rome – began to take part in the consecration of Church of England bishops, and by 1969 – as was pointed out by Timothy Dufort in an article in The Tablet in 1982 – every active bishop of the Church of England was in the Old Catholic succession.