Gender is really not an issue, she said in a phone conversation a fortnight ago, just before travelling to the UK to preach at the annual pilgrimage in St Albans. "It's been a very minor theme. When I was first elected, there was profound objection from a couple of bishops who did not think that women should be ordained. We've long ago gotten past that: they decided they didn't want to be part of the Episcopal Church.

Under the 1944 Education Act schools are legally obliged to stage acts of collective worship “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”. There are separate arrangements for Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh faith schools.

Last week the National Governors' Association, which represents more than 300,000 school governors across England, called for the rule to be abolished for all non-religious schools.

His Grace was struck by the first comment on this in the ensuing chat thread: "I went to a catholic school, ok it was some years ago, but they brainwashed all the kids, or at least they tried, we were taught some nightmarish stuff, hate protestants, too many to put on here, but one sticks in my mind, I actually felt sorry for some of my friends because they were not catholic, we believed they would never know god because they weren't catholic, all religious schools try & brainwash the kid

On the afternoon of Friday 11 July, the Synod will be debating the first consideration of the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure and the associated Amending Canon No.34, which give effect to proposals in developed in response to the reports of the Chichester commissaries and approved by the Synod in February.