Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier

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Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier (April 19, 1940-) is one of the leading figures in independent Catholicism in Britain and the Archbishop of the American Episcopal Church. He was born in Yorkshire, England.

He entered the Bernard Gilpin Society, Sands House in Durham in 1958, leaving a year later to take a job as a teacher. In 1961, he was ordained a minister of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.

He then became involved in a number of independent Episcopal churches. He was ordained by Francis Everden Glenn to the Catholic Episcopal Church in 1962. In April, 1963 he was ordained by Charles Dennis Boltwood of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church. In May, 1963, he was ordained by Charles Leslie Saul of the English Episcopal Church. In 1965 he associated himself with the Archbishop Gerard George Shelley of the Old Roman Catholic Church, only to leave and be ordained again by Hugh George de Willmott Newman of the Catholic Apostolic Church. He remained with that church through 1967, when he left for America.

Upon arriving in America, he joined the American Orthodox Church, staying with it until he returned to England and the Catholic Episcopal Church there.

In 1969, he returned to the United States once again, seemingly to stay. He became a priest under James Hardin George of the American Episcopal Church. On February 11, 1970, George consecrated Clavier and appointed him as a suffragan. Later that year, George resigned himself and Clavier served as primate for the next six years. Harold L. Trott became primate in 1976, only to leave office in 1981 with Clavier once again taking the position as primate.

In 1976, the Anglican Catholic Church was formed when several thousand conservative Anglicans left the church in protest of the ordination of homosexuals and women. Francisco Pagtakhan, a bishop of the Philippine Independent Church, assisted in the ordination of several of the new church's bishops. As the new church started to split into factions, Pagtakhan worked to reunite the new churches. In the process of doing so, he consecrated Clavier as a bishop and thus passed his lines of succession to him. Since then, the Anglican Catholic Church and Anglican Episcopal Church have come through as the largest of the several new churches. Clavier has assisted in the development of overseas foreign missions for the Anglican Episcopal Church.