Owen Vidal

Owen Emeric Vidal (1819-1854)[1] was the first Anglican Bishop of Sierra Leone and West Africa from 1852 until his death three years later.

[2] He was the son of Emeric Essex Vidal and his wife Anna Jane Capper, daughter of the Rev.

[6] The ceremony took place on Whit Sunday, May 1852, in Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury was assisted by the Bishops of London, Chichester, Oxford, and Cape Town.

[7] Vidal was the first bishop of Sierra Leone, a see that comprised all British possessions on the west coast of Africa between the latitudes of 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south, and more especially the colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and the Gold Coast.

[8][9][10] He brought his sick wife back to England in 1854, then returned to Lagos later that same year where he ordained Thomas Babington Macaulay (Nigeria) and Thomas King, who were the first Africans admitted to the ministry of the Anglican Church upon their own soil.