Episcopal Press and News
Bishop Richards of Costa Rica to Resign Office
Diocesan Press Service. July 15, 1968 [67-1]
NEW YORK, NY-- The Tr. Rev. David E Richards, Bishop of Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua, will resign his office effective December 1, 1968, it has been announced by the Rt. Rev. John E. Hines, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The resignation of Bishop Richards will mark the end of an eleven-year episcopate and a new major effort by the Episcopal Church to assist clergymen who are in trouble.
Bishop Hines in announcing the resignation said that Bishop Richards will take up new duties as national coordinator for the House of Bishops Committee on Pastoral Counselling, a group formed in 1959 to study the personal and vocational problems of the clergy.
A nine-year study has resulted in the development of a nation-wide referral procedure to assist the clergy which will be made available to all Bishops of the Church.
Bishop Richards will serve as the coordinator of the national program, which will also include regional representatives and the utilization of professional resources.
In announcing the new clergy referral program, Bishop Hines stressed the critical need for counselling assistance:
"I would not over-estimate the importance of this new facility. Eighteen months ago I said to the Executive Council,'Too many of our clergy crack up these days under the pressure of the demands hurled against their equipment. We can take a leaf from the Air Force in relation to the rescue of pilots and crews, who bail out in battle. The Air Force goes after each and every one of them, expensively and with determination, in order to rescue and return them. Aside from each as a person, there is simply too much of an investment in their training to write them off. Somewhere every week, in this Church, a clergyman bails out; who goes after him?' In a powerful way, Bishop Richards is answering my question in behalf of the Church."
Bishop Hines also paid tribute to the leadership of Bishop Richards during his episcopate in Central America:
"His resignation means a heavy loss to our Church in Central America. He was elected Bishop of Central America in 1957 when the Church in those five republics was established as a single diocese. For ten years he gave leadership to the Church there and equally to the Church at home as a persuasive interpreter of our mission in Latin America."
Last year a new Bishop of Guatemala and El Salvador was chosen in the person of the Rt. Rev. William Frey, and Bishop Hines indicated that it now may be the time to consider further division of episcopal responsibility in Central America if this will help to hasten the growth of a national and indigenous ministry in Central America.
The House of Bishops when it meets in Augusta, GA, October 22 to 24, will be asked to approve Bishop Richards' resignation and to elect a successor.
Bishop Richards, who served as a missionary in the Panama Canal Zone following his graduation from General Theological Seminary in 1945, was Suffragan Bishop of Albany for six years before going to Central America.
He was born in Scranton, PA, on January 23, 1921, and did his undergraduate work at Lehigh University. He received an honorary doctorate in sacred theology from General Seminary in 1952.