Anglican Diocese of Montreal

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Coat-of-arms of the Diocese of Montreal

The Diocese of Montreal is a diocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada of the Anglican Church of Canada, in turn a province of the Anglican Communion. The diocese comprises the 21,400 square kilometres encompassing the City and Island of Montreal, the Laurentians, the South Shore opposite Montreal, and part of the Eastern Townships. The See city is Montreal, and the cathedral is Christ Church. The diocese maintains approximately 14,000 on its parish rolls in seventy-three parishes.

The diocese was established in 1850, having been carved off from the Diocese of Quebec. The first synod was organised nine years later. Its first bishop, Francis Fulford, was influenced by the Oxford Movement, and the diocese has retained a generally Anglo-Catholic or high church orientation since. While Montreal was the largest Canadian city and the centre of commerce in the country, the diocese thrived. In recent decades, however, as these attributes have shifted to Toronto, the English-Canadian population in the diocese has shrunk dramatically, forcing the merger and the closure of parishes. The diocese's original membership of 25,000 150 years ago has shrunk by over one-third, even as the total population in the civil region has expanded from about 70,000 to over 3,000,000.^[1]

The diocese is hom to the Montreal Diocesan Theological College. The present bishop, the diocese's eleventh, is the Right Rev. Barry Clarke. He succeeded Andrew Hutchison after he became Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. The dean is the Very Rev. Michael J. Pitts.