United Methodists Name New Leader for Southland

Bishop Roy I. Sano has been assigned to the United Methodist churches in Southern California, succeeding Jack M. Tuell, who is retiring.

Sano, 61, is the first Asian-American bishop for Southern California and will assume his post Sept. 1.

Delegates at the church’s western regional gathering met on the University of Las Vegas campus last week to select a successor for Tuell, who has served for 12 years.

Now assigned to the Denver area, Sano was born in Brawley, Calif., and educated at UCLA, Union Theological Seminary in New York, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the Claremont Graduate School.

He has taught religion at Mills College, the Pacific School of Religion and the Pacific and Asian-American Center for Theology and Strategies in Berkeley.

Sano is married and has three children. He was assigned to Denver in 1984, when he was elected bishop.

The conference also elected the Rev. Mary Ann Swenson, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Wenatchee, Wash., a bishop of the church. She will replace Sano in Denver.

Swenson becomes the second woman elected bishop in the western region, which extends from Canada to Mexico and from the Rockies to Guam, and the eighth woman elected in the entire denomination.

Swenson, 45, was elected with 81 votes on the 31st ballot. Marvin Abrams of Norwalk received 30 votes; Nancy Yamasaki of Seattle received 18, and Arturo Fernandez of Fresno had 10.

Five conferences across the United States met last week to elect 16 new bishops and assign current bishops for the next four years. Swenson was the youngest of the 16 elected.

Under United Methodist law, all active ordained clergy in good standing are eligible for election to the church’s highest office. United Methodist bishops are elected for life and serve four-year assignments in various jurisdictions.

The western region is the smallest of the denomination’s five U.S. regions with nearly 500,000 members in 1,807 congregations.