THE rector of a group of parishes north of Malvern is to become a bishop in Africa.

Canon Michael Westall, rector of Alfrick, Lulsley, Suckley, Leigh and Bransford, will take up his post as Bishop of South West Tanganyika in the Anglican Church of Tanzania.

His wife Punitha will be his personal assistant in the new diocese, a largely rural area which includes the highlands of SW Tanzania, tea estates and an area around Lake Malawi.

Mr Westall is 61 and studied at Queen's College, Cambridge, Cuddesdon College and Harvard Divinity School before his ordination. He was ordained in 1967 and served a curacy at St Martin's, Hereford, until 1970.

He then became a missionary of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and moved to India, where he served as vice-principal and principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta. Here he met his future wife, Punitha, and they married in 1984 on a brief visit to the UK.

Later that year he moved to Tanzania to take up another theological training position as principal of St Mark's Theological College in Dar es Salaam.

Mr Westall has been rector of Alfrick, Lulsley, Suckley, Leigh and Bransford since 1993.

"It is somewhat painful to uproot ourselves from such a beautiful place where we have made so many friends and where we have been very happy, but we believe it is where we have been called to be," he said.

"In many ways it is a simpler life there, without many of the Western mod cons we take for granted. But on a visit we made last year, we have found ourselves slipping back into the lifestyle."