Episcopal Press and News

Assistant Bishop of Matabeleland Appointed

Diocesan Press Service. November 25, 1968 [71-8]

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- The Rt. Rev. Robert H. Mize, Jr., evicted last summer from South West Africa by the Government of South Africa, has been appointed assistant Bishop of Matabeleland with special ecclesiastical responsibility for the Republic of Botswana. He will begin his new duties in December.

The Diocese of Matabeleland, which includes the western half of Rhodesia as well as all of Botswana, is headed by the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Skelton. Botswana is a newly-independent nation located between Rhodesia and South West Africa. It is the former British protectorate of Bechuanaland.

Bishop Mize, an American citizen, was consecrated as Bishop of Damaraland in November, 1960. He is well known in the Episcopal Church as the founder of the St. Francis Boys' Home of Salina, Kan.

He was notified in January by the South African government that he would not be allowed to remain in his Diocese after July 26. No reason was given for the expulsion.

After Bishop Mize's return to the United States, the government of South Africa informed him that he would be able to return to his Diocese, but only on terms which the Bishop felt he could not accept.

The Government would have required him to state in public that some of his actions "might have been assumed or might have created the impression that he had concerned himself with political matters beyond the scope of his ecclesiastical duties and that he will in future refrain from such acts.

The Bishop, in rejecting the conditions, said he felt they were phrased in such a vague way as to subject him to the constant possibility of expulsion.