Dr Barry Morgan

Dr Barry Morgan is currently Bishop of Llandaff and Archbishop of Wales, but previously served as Bishop of Bangor between 1993 and 1999. Born in the village of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, near Neath in South Wales, he read history at London, Theology at Cambridge and trained for the ministry at Wescott House, Cambridge.

He studied for a doctorate whilst a university lecturer. He has worked in a range of ministerial contexts – in parish ministry, as a university and theological college lecturer and university chaplain, and as an archdeacon, director of ordinands and as a continuing ministerial education officer. He has served on the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, and serves on the Primates Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. He was a member of the Lambeth Commission which produced the Windsor Report 2004. He has published a number of articles and books, his latest being a study of the work of the welsh poet R. S. Thomas ‘Strangely Orthodox’.

He is also currently Pro-Chancellor of the University of Wales, a fellow of Cardiff, UWIC, Bangor and Lampeter and President of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs and has just chaired an inquiry on behalf of Shelter Cymru on homelessness in Wales. He enjoys playing golf and reading novels as recreational activities.

The Right Hon Rhodri Morgan

The Right Hon Rhodri Morgan AM was elected to the National Assembly for Wales in May 1999. Rhodri was the Minister for Economic Development and European Affairs from 1999 to 2000.

He became First Minister on 16 October 2000, having held the same post under its previous title of ‘First Secretary’ since February of that year. On 1 May 2003, the Welsh Labour Party was re-elected in the Assembly elections under Rhodri’s leadership. However, in the 2007 Assembly elections Labour fell four seats short of an overall majority. On 27 June 2007, Rhodri signed the One Wales agreement to form a coalition government with Plaid Cymru.

Rhodri Morgan announced his intention to stand down as Leader of the Labour Party in Wales on 1 October 2009, and stepped down as First Minister for Wales on 8 December 2009.

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Douglas Williams

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Douglas Williams was born in Swansea, south Wales on 14 June 1950, into a Welsh-speaking family, and was educated at Dynevor School in Swansea and Christ's College Cambridge where he studied theology. He studied for his doctorate – in the theology of Vladimir Lossky, a leading figure in Russian twentieth-century religious thought – at Wadham College Oxford, taking his DPhil in 1975. After two years as a lecturer at the College of the Resurrection, near Leeds, he was ordained deacon in Ely Cathedral before returning to Cambridge.

From 1977, he spent nine years in academic and parish work in Cambridge: first at Westcott House, being ordained priest in 1978, and from 1980 as curate at St George's, Chesterton. In 1983 he was appointed as a lecturer in Divinity in the university, and the following year became dean and chaplain of Clare College. 1986 saw a return to Oxford now as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church; he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989, and became a fellow of the British Academy in 1990. He is also an accomplished poet and translator.

In 1991 Professor Williams accepted election and consecration as bishop of Monmouth, a diocese on the Welsh borders, and in 1999 on the retirement of Archbishop Alwyn Rice Jones he was elected Archbishop of Wales, one of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion. Thus it was that, in July 2002, with eleven years experience as a diocesan bishop and three as a leading primate in the Communion, Archbishop Williams was confirmed on 2 December 2002 as the 104th bishop of the See of Canterbury: the first Welsh successor to St Augustine of Canterbury and the first since the mid-thirteenth century to be appointed from beyond the English Church.

Dr Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. He has been involved in many theological, ecumenical and educational commissions. He has written extensively across a very wide range of related fields of professional study – philosophy, theology (especially early and patristic Christianity), spirituality and religious aesthetics – as evidenced by his bibliography. He has also written throughout his career on moral, ethical and social topics and, since becoming archbishop, has turned his attention increasingly on contemporary cultural and interfaith issues.