Up to 50 clergy and laity will gather for the first time nationally at St Stephen's College at Coomera for three days from Tuesday to discuss the Australian Anglican ordinariate - the local framework which will allow them to keep their married clergy, liturgy and church structures within Catholicism.
The national meeting comes after three married British bishops, similarly unhappy with the liberal direction of the Anglican Church - such as allowing women clergy - became the first to be ordained as Catholic priests within a British ordinariate, at Westminster Cathedral earlier this month.
But Archbishop Hepworth, who first visited the Vatican 21 years ago seeking to bring a Reformation church back into communion with the Holy See, said it felt ''strange but good'' that the long-sought-after arrangement was coming to pass.
Father Warren Wade from the parish of St Mary the Virgin, Sydney's only Traditional Anglican Communion parish, which operates out of a rented church space in North Turramurra, said his paperwork for re-ordination was in.
''I think this is a tremendous thing and the Holy Father has been very generous in having an understanding of where we come from, to the point where we can keep so much of the tradition that we've gained over the last 500 years,'' he said. ''All my parishioners - all 15 of them who come to Mass every Sunday - they're all for it.''
