The Right Rev Roderic Norman Coote, who died in Zimbabwe on July 8th aged 75, was a distinguished athlete and sportsman - Irish champion hurdler over 120 yards - and a pioneering missionary bishop. One of the longest serving bishops in the Anglican Communion, he would have been 50 years in the episcopate next January.
Born at Woking, Surrey in 1915, Roderic Coote was the third of four sons of the late Commodore Bernard Trotter Coote. His brothers included the late Rev Denis Ivor Coote and the late Michael Coote of Dublin, who worked tirelessly for charities and the Church of Ireland.
Roderic Coote attended Woking Grammar School before returning to his father's native Ireland. At Trinity College Dublin, he studied mental and moral sciences (philosophy), and received his BA in 1937 and his Divinity Testimonium in 1938.
He was ordained deacon that year and priest in 1939, and served his first curacy in Saint Bartholomew's, Ballsbridge, from 1938 to 1941. He took his MA at TCD that year, and was appointed an honorary clerical vicar of Christ Church Cathedral, where he was recognised as both an excellent pianist and composer of music. But he was strongly attracted to overseas mission, and volunteered to work in West Africa with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, now USPG).
From 1941 to 1951, he was an SPG missionary working in the Diocese of Gambia and the Rio Pongas, a far-flung and demanding diocese, spread over 200,000 sq miles, under French, Portuguese and British colonial rule - embracing Gambia, Senegal, Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau), Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands.
He was appointed Bishop of the Diocese in 1951, and was consecrated in Saint George's Cathedral, Freetown, Sierra Leone, on May 15th, 1951, by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher of Canterbury and 11 other bishops. TCD honoured his episcopal elevation with an honorary degree of Doctor in Divinity in 1954. From 1955 to 1957, Roderic Coote was provincial secretary to the Archbishop of West Africa, and when he returned to England in 1957 he was succeeded as bishop in Gambia by another Irish sportsman and SPG missionary, the rugby international St John Pike.
He became Bishop of Fulham in the Diocese of London with responsibility for northern and central Europe, an area that later became the independent Diocese in Europe.
In 1964, Roderic Coote married Erica Lynette Shrubbs, a hospital equipment consultant, - and they had two daughters and a son: Antoinette Alexandra (born 1965), Bernadette Sophie (born 1966) and Patrick Shrubbs (born 1972).
In 1966 the family moved to Colchester in the Diocese of Chelmsford. There he was Suffragan Bishop of Colchester from 1966 to 1987 - and Archdeacon of Colchester from 1969 to 1972. He retired in 1987, but continued to maintain an active interest in missionary work, and died in Harare earlier this month. . A memorial service will be held in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, in September.
The Right Rev Roderic Norman Coote: born 1915, died July 2000