Episcopal Press and News
Kraft Elected Bishop of Pretoria
Episcopal News Service. January 7, 1982 [82004]
PRETORIA, South Africa (DPS, Jan. 7) -- The Very Rev. Richard Kraft, an Episcopal missionary and dean of St. Alban's Cathedral here, has been elected Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pretoria.
Kraft, 45 and a native of Chicago, is the first American to be elected to a South African see. Since his graduation from General Theological Seminary in New York in 1961, he has served as an appointed missionary of the Episcopal Church.
He has said that the Rt. Rev. Alpheus Zulu, the first black Anglican bishop in South Africa, was the man who most influenced his decision to serve in this country.
A Christian education specialist, Kraft has helped train local leaders in Zululand and Natal. He speaks Zulu fluently and said that he hopes to learn the other seven major languages in his new diocese.
In 1979 he was appointed dean of Pretoria where he lives with his wife Phyllis and their four children.
The Diocese of Pretoria, where the capital of South Africa is located, covers all the Transvaal from a line midway between the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg upwards, thus stretching to the borders of Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana. There are plans to divide the diocese in four centers that eventually will become dioceses.
In a letter to the World Mission office at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, Kraft said: "Being a son of the Episcopal Church I hope that we can keep in close contact and relationship. I want to express my deep gratitude for the wonderful way in which we have been loved and supported through the last 21 years. I need your prayers more than ever because we have accepted this new challenge that the Lord has put before us.." His canonical tie to the Episcopal Church will now be severed.
Kraft will be consecrated and installed as bishop on Easter Day 1982.