ROCHESTER: Diocese prepares to ordain and consecrate Prince Singh as next bishop
Episcopal News Service. May 29, 2008 [052908-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Rev. Dr. Prince Singh will be ordained and consecrated May 31 as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will preside and preach at the liturgy, which begins at 11 a.m. in the Eastman Theater on the campus of the University of Rochester.
Singh, 45, was elected February 2. He was the rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Oakland/Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, in the Diocese of Newark at the time.
He will succeed Bishop Jack McKelvey, who has spent the past eight years as bishop of Rochester. Prior to being called to Rochester, McKelvey had spent eight years as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Newark.
Singh was ordained a priest in the Church of South India (CSI) in 1990. CSI was inaugurated in 1947 by the union of the South India United Church (itself a union of Congregational and Presbyterian/Reformed traditions), the southern Anglican diocese of the Church of India, Burma, Ceylon, and the Methodist Church in South India. It is one of the four United Churches in the Anglican Communion.
After serving congregations in rural south India, in the Diocese of New Jersey and elsewhere in the Diocese of Newark, Singh was called to St. Alban's in 2000.
He graduated from Madras Christian College, Tambaram, and Union Biblical Seminary, both in India.
He also holds degrees from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (1994) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1995). Singh was awarded the doctor of philosophy degree from Drew University in 2005 in the Religion and Society division of its theological school.
He and his wife, Roja, are parents to two sons. She is a tenure-track faculty member in the Women's Studies Department at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.
More information about Singh's life and ministry, as well as his answers to the search committee's questions, is available here.
The Rochester diocese serves eight counties in the Finger Lakes region of New York in 52 congregations and seven chapels and a membership of 13,000.