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Episcopal convention in Salt Lake City to tackle race, gun violence, other big issues

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
By: 
Peggy Fletcher Stack / The Salt Lake Tribune

[The Salt Lake Tribune] In 2006, Nevada's Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was the first woman ever elected to preside over the Episcopal Church. This is her third and last Triennial General Convention, the one that will end her nine-year tenure as head of the 2.5 million-member church.

For Jefferts Schori, who sounded mellow and not nostalgic Tuesday, it doesn't feel old.

"Every time the church gathers, it is new," she said at a news conference at the Salt Palace, where the 78th General Convention gets underway Thursday. "There are always new challenges."

Meeting in Salt Lake City for the first time in its history, some 200 bishops, 800 deputies (four clergy and four lay members elected from every one of the church's 108 dioceses) as well as 200 alternates will wrestle, for example, with the questions of racial reconciliation and gun violence.