Miguel Uchôa

Miguel Uchôa Cavalcanti is a Brazilian Anglican bishop and author. Since 2012, he has been diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Recife, which broke away from the Anglican Communion-recognized Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB), and since 2018, he has been the first primate of the GAFCON-recognized Anglican Church in Brazil (IAB). Uchôa is also rector of the Anglican Parish of the Holy Spirit (known by its Portuguese acronym PAES) in greater Recife, which is considered one of the largest Anglican churches in Latin America with more than 1,000 worshipers.

Early life and ministry Uchôa studied fishing engineering and was converted to Protestant Christianity through the work of Aliança Bíblica Universitária do Brasil, a campus ministry organization. He received his theological education from the Seminário Teológico Batista do Norte do Brasil. Uchôa was married to Valéria Uchôa until her death in 2018; they had two sons.

Anglican realignment In 2004, following the deposition of Recife bishop Robinson Cavalcanti by the IEAB, Uchôa joined two-thirds of the clergy and roughly 95 percent of the laity in disaffiliating from the IEAB and joining an independent Diocese of Recife under the "extra-provincial recognition" of Greg Venables, primate of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone. In October 2012, after Cavalcanti's murder, Uchôa was elected to succeed him.

In May 2018, GAFCON recognized the Anglican Church–Diocese of Recife as an autonomous province, the Anglican Church in Brazil. Uchôa was installed as the IAB's first primate. To form the new province, the diocese split into three dioceses (Recife, Vitória and João Pessoa) and a missionary region encompassing the rest of Brazil.

As primate, Uchôa has participated in the 2018 Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem and the 2020 enthronement of Stephen Kaziimba as archbishop of the Church of Uganda. He is a member of the GAFCON Primates Council and a member of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches. In 2023, after the Church of England General Synod's vote to welcome blessings of same-sex unions, he signed the Global South statement rejecting the Archbishop of Canterbury's leadership of the Anglican Communion. At the fourth quinquennial GAFCON event in Kigali in April 2023, Uchôa was elected vice chairman of GAFCON.