Africa has once more lost the bid to produce the head of a major orthodox church. News Express can this morning report that hopes that Dr. John Sentamu, the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, Britain, would emerge as the next head of the Anglican Church have evaporated into thin air.

Reports from Britain indicate that Sentamu has been dumped in favour of Briton Justin Welby, a former oil executive who has been a bishop for only a year. According to a report in the authoritative British newspaper Daily Telegraph, “Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, has accepted the post of Archbishop of Canterbury” and “will be announced as successor to Dr. Rowan Williams as early as Friday, after the Crown Nominations Commission put his name forward to Downing Street.”

The paper however observes that “the choice of the 56-year-old to lead the world’s 77 million Anglicans marks a decisive break with the past for the Church. While his predecessors have drawn on long and distinguished careers as academics or clerics, his experience is of the world of mammon as much as God.”

Welby (see photo) used to be an oil company executive but gave up a highly paid career in the late 1980s after feeling a “call” to the priesthood. He is widely seen as a friend of Africa and has worked in conflict resolution in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta “where he narrowly avoided being shot dead,” according to Daily Telegraph.

News Express reports that more than half the number of Anglicans are believed to come from Africa but that the continent has for years being at loggerheads with the Church hierarchy over the ordination of gay priests.

The need for a new head for the church arose when Rowan Williams last March announced his decision to step down as archbishop of Canterbury at this year to take up a university position at Cambridge.