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The Most Reverend

Sione Uluʻilakepa
The Most Reverend; Sione Uluʻilakepa
Bishop of Polynesia; Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
Church	Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
Diocese	Polynesia
In office	2023–present
Predecessor	Fereimi Cama
Orders
Ordination	1992; by Jabez Bryce
Consecration	11 March 2023; by Don Tamihere and Philip Richardson
Personal details
Born	1965 (age 59–60); Nukuʻalofa, Tonga

Sione Uluʻilakepa (born 1965) is a Tongan Anglican bishop. Since 2023, he has been bishop of Polynesia and thus simultaneously serving as one of three co-equal primates of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia in the Anglican Communion.

Early life and education

Uluʻilakepa was born in Nukuʻalofa in 1965. He was raised in a "staunchly Anglican" family and attended St Andrew's Anglican High School in Tonga. At 20, he received a call to ordained ministry and studied at St John the Baptist Theological College in Suva, St John's College, Morpeth, in Australia, Pacific Theological College in Fiji and St John's College and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He married Taina, and they had two children.^[1]

Ordained ministry

In 1992, Bishop Jabez Bryce ordained him to the priesthood at St Paul's Anglican Church in Nukuʻalofa. Uluʻilakepa served parishes in Haʻapai, Tonga; Pago Pago, American Samoa; and Apia, Samoa, before he moved in 1995 to become assistant priest at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Suva.^[1]

He returned to Tonga in 2000 to become a parish vicar, a ministry trainer and a chaplain and later principal at St Andrew's. Starting in 2013, Uluʻilakepa became a ministry educator in the diocese. From 2018 to 2023, he was principal of St John the Baptist Theological College. He also worked as a Common Life Liturgical Commissioner, in which capacity he sought to blend Polynesian traditions and symbols into Anglican liturgies and helped to translate eucharistic liturgies into Polynesian languages as part of a revision of the New Zealand Prayer Book.^[1]

In December 2022, Uluʻilakepa was elected bishop of Polynesia in succession to Fereimi Cama, who had died in office in 2021.^[2] He was consecrated by the ACANZP co-primates Philip Richardson and Don Tamihere in March 2023 in a service at Holy Trinity Cathedral.^[3] In attendance were Fijian president Wiliame Katonivere and his wife.^[4] As bishop of Polynesia, Uluʻilakepa serves automatically as a co-primate of the church with the title and style of an archbishop.^[2]