The Right Reverend Joost de Blank

Joost de Blank, born in Rotterdam of Dutch parents in 1908, was educated in England. He was ordained in 1932 and served as an army chaplain 1939-44. From 1948 to 1952 he was an Assistant General Secretary to the Student Christian Movement, before coming vicar of the church of St John the Baptist, Greenhill, Harrow. In 1952 he was consecrated Bishop of Stepney and in 1957 succeeded Geoffrey Hare Clayton as archbishop of Cape Town. In South Africa he refused to preach in any church not open to blacks as well as whites, and he opposed clause 29 of the Natives Law Amendment Bill, which gave the civil authorities powers to exlcude non-whites from Anglican churches. In 1960 de Blank called on the Dutch Reformed Church to repudiate apartheid. He also criticised the South African jubilee celebrations: 'This is no time for rejoicing, but for shame'. Ill health forced de Blank to resign from the Anglican archbishopric of Cape Town in 1963. He was subsequently appointed a canon of Westminster Abbey. Illness was to prevent him taking up a new appointment as bishop of Hong Kong and he died in 1968.