Province Canterbury First incumbent Richard Yngworth | Diocese Canterbury Formation 1536 | |
The Bishop of Dover is an episcopal title used by a suffragan bishop of the Church of England Diocese of Canterbury, England. The title takes its name after the town of Dover in Kent. The Bishop of Dover holds the additional title of "Bishop in Canterbury" and is empowered to act almost as if he were the diocesan bishop of Canterbury, since the actual diocesan bishop (the Archbishop of Canterbury) is based at Lambeth Palace in London, and thus is so frequently away from his diocese fulfilling national and international duties. Among other things, this gives the Bishop of Dover an ex officio seat in the Church's General Synod. Until recently, there was another proper suffragan, the Bishop of Maidstone, who did not have the same extra powers.
The role of the Bishop of Dover in the Diocese of Canterbury is comparable to that of the Cardinal Vicar in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rome, who exercises most functions that the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, formally has in his own diocese. The arrangements by which the Bishop of Dover acts as if he were the diocesan dates from 1980, under provisions in Section 10 of the Dioceses Measure 1978. The 2001 report To Lead and to Serve recommended making these arrangement more permanent and styling the pseudo-diocesan as "Bishop in Canterbury"; that style was already in use before the review.
The current Bishop of Dover, since February 2010, is Trevor Willmott.