The Rt. Rev. C. Charles Vaché, Bishop of Southern Virginia from 1978 to 1991, died early on All Saints’ Day. He was 83. His funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at Trinity Church in Portsmouth, Va.
 
Born in 1926 in New Bern, N.C., he graduated from the University of North Carolina and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., in 1952. He was ordained deacon in 1952 and priest the following year.
 
He served St. Michael’s, Richmond, first as minister-in-charge from 1952-54, then as rector from 1955-57; St. Christopher’s School, Richmond, as chaplain from 1953-56; and TrinityChurch, Portsmouth, where he served as rector from 1957-76, when he was elected bishop coadjutor. In 1978, five regional installation services and grassroots workshops marked his transition to seventh bishop of the diocese.
 
After resigning in 1991, he served as dean of St. George’sCollege in Jerusalem, assisting bishop in the dioceses of East Carolina and West Virginia, and interim rector of Bruton Parish in Williamsburg and the Church of the Good Shepherd Norfolk.
 
Bishop Vaché welcomed the charismatic renewal within the diocese. He opposed capital punishment and said that Israelis were oppressing Palestinians. He offered theological commentary on a weekly television show and performed the diocese’s first formal St. Francis’ Day blessing of animals. During his tenure, Bishop Vaché changed his mind about women’s ordination and in 1985 ordained the first female deacons of the diocese.
 
“Things are going to change and you have one of two options: You’re either going to fight it or work with it and mold it,” he said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot in 1976.
 
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