Sean Rowe, a 49-year-old bishop from western Pennsylvania, on Wednesday became the youngest person ever elected as leader of the Episcopal Church.
He immediately issued a sobering call for the church, which has faced division and chronic membership loss, to confront an “existential crisis” that he compared with the steel industry collapse in his native Rust Belt.
Rowe, who leads two small dioceses along Lake Erie, will succeed Bishop Michael Curry, the first African American to hold the position, when Curry’s nine-year term ends on Nov. 1. The presiding bishop serves as the denomination’s chief pastor, president and CEO.
Rowe was elected on the first ballot in the House of Bishops, which
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