08/04/2024
ANGLO-CATHOLIC
ARCHDIOCESE OF THE SOUTHWEST
The Diocese of the Southwest was originally part of the "continuing Anglican" movement off of the Episcopal Church of the USA, though now it has long ago left that movement and professes Orthodox Old Catholicism. In 2011, it was renamed the See of St. Stephen, and in 2022, merging with the Anglo-Roman Metropolitan See of Aquileia, became the Apostolic See of Sts. Stephen and Mark since 2023, the Apostolic See of the United Roman-Ruthenian Church.
The first Bishop of the Diocese of the Southwest was the Right Reverend Robert C. Harvey. The diocese left the Anglican Catholic Church in 1982 and was incorporated as a separate entity in 1983. (That corporation was dissolved in 1989, and a new corporation was formed in 2008.) They first went to the American Episopal Church, which was separate from the Episcopal Church of the USA, but predated the "St. Louis movement continuing Anglicans." Saint Edwin Caudill (Rt. Rev. Howard Edwin Caudill, canonised in 2023) succeeded Bishop Harvey as the Bishop Ordinary. In the late 1980s, Saint Edwin withdrew his diocese from the American Episcopal Church into the Anglican Church, Inc. In 1993, Bishop Caudill was consecrated sub-conditione by Macario Ga, Supreme Pontiff of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church in diverse Orthodox and Catholic apostolic succession, thereby beginning the convergence of apostolic heritage and tradition that the Imperial Roman Catholic Church maintains today. (It is for this reason that Saint Edwin, even though he was the second bishop of the diocese, is the Apostolic Founder of the Apostolic See of Saint Stephen and Mark.) This apostolic succession included, among many others, Damian I, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Pope Cyril VI, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria.
