The Bishop who christened the Sussexes’ daughter Princess Lilibet is a former newspaper reporter who was chief of staff for former US president Richard Nixon.
Right Reverend John Harvey Taylor – the Bishop of Los Angeles – baptised Harry and Meghan’s 21-month-old at their Montecito home in California on Friday.
Harry has been outspoken about his hatred of the media and his autobiography Spare makes clear his distrust and contempt for the press, particularly over the treatment of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales.
— Bishop John Harvey Taylor (@edlabishop) February 6, 2023
Bishop Taylor was a reporter and editor for twice-weekly Chula Vista Star News in the 1970s.
Nixon, who died in 1994, was the 37th president of the US and the only one to resign from office, following the Watergate scandal.
A profile in the Los Angeles Times described Bishop Taylor as one of Nixon’s closest confidants in later years and as co-executor of his estate.
He was also director of the Nixon library.
— Bishop John Harvey Taylor (@edlabishop) November 30, 2022
Nixon – a republican – used to call Bishop Taylor “our House liberal”.
He was the former president’s researcher and editorial assistant, before becoming his chief of staff between 1984 and 1990 before being ordained as a priest in 2004.
Nixon resigned in 1974 after he was implicated in the Watergate scandal following a cover-up when five men connected with his election campaign team were arrested after a break-in at at the offices of the Democratic Party’s national headquarters.
Bishop Taylor was elected as the seventh bishop of Los Angeles to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in December 2016 and took office in December 2017.
He is a father of four and a grandfather of two.
The diocese’s website says he has “devoted himself to promoting reconciliation, transparency”.
It adds: “In those called to leadership in the church, whether lay or ordained, he encourages the exercise of empathy and curiosity as tools of evangelism, to enrich relationships and build new ones across the barriers of difference and prejudice according to race, language, geography, orientation, identification, age, and socioeconomics.”
