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The archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans, is to retire three years ahead of the usual retirement age for the post.

Archbishop George Carey, who made the widely-expected announcement Tuesday, will leave office in October, when he will be 67, after having helped Queen Elizabeth II mark the 50th anniversary of her reign. It is understood that the Queen asked him to stay on for her golden jubilee this year.

Carey has been archbishop of Canterbury since 1991.

"I shall have served eleven-and-a-half years in a demanding yet wonderfully absorbing and rewarding post," he said. "I feel certain this will be the right and proper time to stand down. I look forward to exciting opportunities and challenges in the coming months, and then to fresh ones in the years that follow."

A senior church official at a press briefing today denied that Carey was retiring early, pointing out that bishops could retire from age 65. "Dr Carey wants to hand on the baton to his successor while he is still full of energy, vitality and commitment and I can assure you that he is," the official said.

Carey's three immediate predecessors—Robert Runcie, Donald Coggan, and Michael Ramsey—all served until around the age of 70, but the pressures of the post have been increasing while the see of Canterbury has developed as the de facto presidency of the world-wide Anglican Communion.

Last year, the head of a team inquiring into the future of the Canterbury see, Lord Hurd of Westwell, suggested that the archbishop's job was becoming unmanageable.

"Lambeth [the archbishop's administrative office in London] has grown organically. We are trying to make the whole manageable," Hurd said.

Among the proposals in the team's report are the appointment of a foreign bishop to work at Lambeth on Anglican Communion affairs, and more freedom for the archbishop from his duties as a diocesan bishop.

Carey's retirement creates an obvious opportunity to restructure the Canterbury see.

Among those mentioned by commentators as possible successors to Carey are the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres; the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones; the Bishop of St Albans, Christopher Herbert; the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali; and the Archbishop of Wales, Rowan Williams.

The Church of England's second-ranking prelate, the archbishop of York, David Hope, is not viewed as a candidate. There is no automatic succession from York to Canterbury, and Hope is only a few years younger than Carey.

Since the Church of England is an establishment church, the appointment of bishops and archbishops is made in the name of Queen Elizabeth II, but in practice by the British government.

The new archbishop of Canterbury will be chosen by Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself an Anglican, from two names put forward by church authorities.

The person Blair chooses as archbishop will have to face the challenge of holding together both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

Much of Carey's time has been spent dealing with potential splits in the two bodies. Early in his tenure, in 1994, the first women priests were ordained into the Church of England—a move strongly supported by the archbishop. A major split in the church was avoided by the appointment of "flying bishops," allowing traditionalist parishes to receive pastoral supervision from bishops of like mind rather than the diocesan bishop.

Pressure has since built for women to be appointed as bishops. A church commission of inquiry is examining the issue under the chairmanship of one of the presumed candidates to succeed Carey, Bishop Nazir-Ali, who has expressed personal sympathy with the idea of women bishops.

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January (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46