The Rt. Rev. Hays Rockwell, Bishop of Missouri, surprised a diocesan convention audience Nov. 17 by announcing he was calling for a coadjutor. Bishop Rockwell, 64, was installed as diocesan in 1992 and announced plans to retire in September 2002. A search committee will meet shortly after Jan. 1 to begin the process leading to an election in the fall of 2001. Former Missouri Senator the Rev. Canon John C. Danforth has agreed to chair the election committee. There had been speculation that Bishop Rockwell would soon call a coadjutor because of his age and because he had recently completed a successful $4 million capital campaign to help fund the major initiatives undertaken during his episcopacy. But few of the 300 in the audience for his annual address to convention expected to hear the news that night. "By the time we leave we will have been among you for more than a decade. I will have been in the ordained ministry for more than 40 years," Bishop Rockwell said. "We are in good health. We aren't at odds with anyone in our diocese. We count it a privilege to be ministering at this place and time. It just seems to us right to move now in the next, less public chapters of our lives." Bishop Rockwell has pushed for a greater presence of the church among the poor and in society during his episcopacy. One-fourth of the $4 million raised in the capital campaign is designated for parish-based programs in neighborhoods of poverty. Bishop Rockwell also insisted on keeping the diocesan offices in downtown St. Louis, despite the availability of a diocesan-owned building and property in the relatively affluent West St. Louis County area.