Leaders of the Episcopal Church have told worldwide Anglican bishops they had no authority to try to make the church's US branch change its stand on the consecration of gay bishops. The Executive Council of the US Episcopal Church approved a statement questioning the authority of the worldwide church's top bishops "to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion," the formal name for the 77 million-member global church. The statement was in response to a communiqué issued in February when the church's presiding bishops met in Tanzania. The bishops called for the 2.4 million-member US church to declare by the end of September a moratorium on the consecration of openly homosexual gay bishops. In addition, the bishops at the African meeting urged the US church to end "public rites" blessing same-sex unions and to allow for a US-based "primatial vicar" to oversee disaffected followers, some of whom have already put themselves under the jurisdiction of conservative bishops in Africa and elsewhere. It was the 2003 Episcopal Church consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of church history, that triggered the dispute. Robinson's elevation not only splintered the US church but riled defenders of traditional Christianity in the church's "Global South" – African, Asian and Latin American congregations that now account for half of the world's Anglican followers. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, Anglicans are organised as a federation of national churches without hierarchical lines of authority, though the Archbishop of Canterbury holds a first-among-equals leadership position. The bishops of the US church will meet in September in New Orleans. Presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Thursday that the matter will be discussed again then and "the bishops will do what they will do." Ref: Reuters (m)