“I am discerning the exact date of my retirement”, she says.
Anglican clergy have difficulty deciding things, they have to discern them instead.
In this case, Nicholl’s precise retirement date is drifting somewhere in the ecclesiastical ether, wafting along, shrouded in clouds of incense waiting to be discerned.
It’s a bit like the second coming: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
From here:
Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has yet to decide on an exact retirement date, Council of General Synod (CoGS) heard Nov. 24.
“Given the decision at General Synod regarding the primacy, I’m sure there’s curiosity about the next steps,” Nicholls said in her opening remarks at the first meeting of the 2023-2025 CoGS. “I am discerning the exact date of my retirement. However, I can say that it will be before Oct. 1, 2024.”
At last summer’s General Synod, the church’s legislative body voted down a resolution that would have allowed any sitting primate to finish out their term if their 70th birthday fell less than one year before the next General Synod. As a result, Nicholls will be required to retire by her next birthday in October 2024, more than half a year before General Synod 2025.
When she discerns her retirement date, she told CoGS, she will write to the senior metropolitan, currently Archbishop Anne Germond of the ecclesiastical province of Ontario, who will consult with the other metropolitans, the prolocutor, deputy prolocutor and others to determine which metropolitan will serve as acting primate from then until the next General Synod.