The talent of female clergy is going to waste and the church is suffering because women are not permitted to be bishops, the Archdeacon of Melbourne’s Northern region has claimed.

Archdeacon Peta Sherlock’s remarks come in the wake of the strong endorsement at last month’s Melbourne Synod to ordain women to the episcopacy immediately. The Synod also endorsed a push for the Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Watson, to appoint a woman to the role of assistant bishop. There is a current vacancy for assistant bishop in the Diocese’s northern region.

“It’s sending a good, strong message to General Synod, that this is an urgent matter,” said Archdeacon Sherlock, who is said by some to be the most likely candidate to become Australia’s first women bishop. But she admits it is an unlikely scenario.

“They’ll never ask me because I’m too radical,” she said. “I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if it lost [at General Synod in 2004]. Archbishop Peter Watson is not going to consecrate women in his time, I’m absolutely positive about that; whether the board of nominators will or not I don’t know. I don’t know whether this has helped or hindered, but I’ve had women say to me they don’t actually expect it to have any effect, but it’s shifted people’s imaginations.

“There are 12 to 15 women in Melbourne who are Bishop material, it’s just we’re just not allowed to consider them,” she added. “We’ve been discussing women’s ministry for half of my life, all of my ordained life, and as another person said to me ‘I just want to have some of [ordained] ministry when my status in the church is not being discussed’.”

• In the Diocese of Perth, Archbishop Peter Carnley’s address to the diocesan Synod has reignited debate over the role of church leaders in politics. The Primate told Synod that although it irritated some politicians and media commentators, religious people had as much right as any other citizens to participate in public affairs and to comment on public issues. “We must resist utterly any attempt to eliminate the Church from the State, or to suggest that Christian people should not participate in or contribute to the public life of the country,” he said.