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The Right Reverend and The Right Honourable Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie PC MC ( October 2 1921 – July 11 2000 ) was the 102nd Archbishop Of Canterbury from 1980 to 1991 . EARLY LIFE He was born and spent his early life in . CAREER ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY During his time in the key Anglican position of Archbishop Of Canterbury , he witnessed a breaking down of an historical link between the Conservative Party and the Church Of England , which had often been described as "the Tory party at prayer". This was due mainly to the Church's pronouncements on political matters and Margaret Thatcher 's support for the ethos of individualism and wealth creation, and her claim that "there is no such thing as society", which many in the Anglican church thought was uncaring and anti-Christian (ironically, Mrs. Thatcher had been brought up in the Methodist Church and her father was a lay preacher, from him she learned the Methodist ideas of individual salvation, thrift, self-help, hard work and discipline). In 1981, he officiated at the marriage of Charles, Prince Of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer , despite suspecting privately that they were ill-suited and that their marriage would not last. With a dramatic gesture of goodwill, he knelt in prayer with Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral of Canterbury during John Paul's visit to Great Britain in 1982. In 1985, there was strong friction between the Church of England and the Conservative Government, in particular Norman Tebbit , over the Church's report "Faith in the City", which criticised the government's handling of social problems in British inner-city areas. As a result of this, Tebbit became a strong supporter of the Disestablishment of the Church Of England , claiming that institutions affiliated to the British State should not express what he saw as overtly partisan political views. When Runcie visited the Pope in 1989, he set out to reconcile the Church Of England with the Church Of Rome . Runcie advocated the Papacy as having a 'primacy of honour' rather than 'primacy of jurisdiction' over the Anglican church, a proposal consistent with the report of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission . The Pope did not go along with this, however, claiming that the Papacy already has primacy of jurisdiction over all other churches regardless of whether or not this is officially recognised and also that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church would not change to accommodate Runcie's proposals. RETIREMENT When he retired as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was created a Life Peer , as Baron Runcie, of Cuddesdon in the County of Oxfordshire , enabling him to remain in the House Of Lords where he had previously sat as a Lord Spiritual . He died of Cancer in 2000. FAMILY Lord Runcie's wife, Rosalind , whom he married on 5 September 1957 , was well-known as a pianist. He had two children - James Runcie, an acclaimed novelist, and Rebecca Runcie, as well as four grandchildren: Rosie, Charlotte, Matthew and Edward. QUOTATION In the postscript of Humphrey Carpenter 's biography: : ''I have done my best to die before this book is published.'' REFERENCES
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