The House of Bishops of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB) has written to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams questioning his impartiality over the Recife crisis.

In a Nov. 14 letter, 12 active and retired IEAB bishops defended the deposition of Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti of Recife for “disregard” of his fellow bishops and for performing an illicit confirmation in the Diocese of Ohio in 2004. Bishop Cavalcanti’s trial by the Brazilian House of Bishops conformed to canon law, and should be recognized by the wider Church, they said.

The bishops also defended the deposition without trial of 32 Recife clergy, saying the canons permitted the priests’ removal for “abandoning the communion of this Church” after they had refused to disown Bishop Cavalcanti and support the replacement named by them.

By attending the Global South meeting in Egypt and not commenting on the Brazilian Church’s “arbitrary exclusion” Archbishop Williams “legitimized” the proceedings, the IEAB bishops declared. His silence, they said, gave tacit approval to the Global South’s reinvention of the Anglican Communion as a “federation of churches” bound by a “confessional declaration.”

The IEAB bishops criticized Archbishop Williams’ management of the Recife crisis, saying his leadership of the Anglican Communion lacked “impartiality” and “coherence,” and they accused him of favoring Bishop Cavalcanti and his allies among the Global South.

Nor were the Brazilian bishops pleased that Bishop Cavalcanti had been allowed personally to plead his case to Archbishop Williams, while Lambeth Palace had continued to ignore requests from the IEAB to meet with them in London to allow the province to respond to the “slander” and “disrespect” heaped upon it.

The Brazilian bishops also objected to Archbishop Gregory Venables’ interference in the Diocese of Recife saying his actions “violated Anglican principles” of the “sovereignty of each Church” and accused the Primate of the Southern Cone of attempting to “structure the Anglican Communion on an ideological and not a territorial base.” Archbishop Venables received Bishop Cavalcanti and his clergy shortly after their deposition into the Church of the Province of the Southern Cone—offering them temporary provincial oversight.

A spokesman for Lambeth Palace declined comment on the letter, saying the Archbishop of Canterbury was traveling in Pakistan and had not read it yet.

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