The 2020 division
2020: separate leadership and shared history
The Free Protestant Episcopal Church of England was founded on 2 November 1897. The FPEC Worldwide Communion and Anglican Free Communion International (AFCI) share historical roots but have separate leadership and structures. This account follows our Church and Communion through dated letters and original records.
Archbishop Richard Arthur Palmer continued to lead our Communion, which used the name Episcopal Free Communion from 2020. He announced that name on 15 August 2020; the accompanying emblem carried both AFC and EFC. In March 2025, he appointed Archbishop Ricardo Lorite de Lima as his successor, and the Communion returned to the name FPEC Worldwide Communion.
AFCI has its own leadership and structure. Its history dates the Most Reverend Ronald Lee Firestone’s election as Presiding Bishop to 1 January 2020 and records the Most Reverend Raúl Toro’s election in 2022.
We tell this history with a desire for reconciliation. The separation associated with Bishop Horst Block in 1978 was followed by reunion in 2011. That experience gives us hope that today’s division can also be healed.
Our prayer remains “that all may be one” (John 17:21). We seek truth with charity, remembering that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), and look towards a future of restored fellowship.