The Right Reverend Ambrose Weekes He had all the gifts necessary for these posts - warmth, friendliness, caring and fun combined with the devotional seriousness of a priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. As a result he was a popular figure wherever he went and was both a sensitive and a generous counsellor to all ranks in the Navy and subsequently to the clergy and laypeople of the 300 Anglican chaplaincies in Europe. Ambrose Walter Marcus Weekes, the son of a naval officer who won a wartime DSO, was born on April 25 1919 and had his early education at the Cathedral Choir School and the Joseph Williamson School in Rochester. Feeling drawn to Holy Orders, he went to King's College, London, to read Theology and completed his degree in Bristol - KCL was evacuated there during the war. He then spent a year at Lincoln Theological College before heading to the Medway in 1942 as a curate at St Luke's Church, Gillingham. Two years later he enlisted as a chaplain RNVR and when the war was over stayed on as a chaplain RN. During the next 26 years Weekes served on many ships and shore bases worldwide and from 1949 to 1951 was chaplain of the aircraft carrier Triumph which was involved, with the US Fleet, in the Korean War. He also served with the Royal Marines, first at the depot in Deal, then from 1953 to1955 with 45 RM Commando. Seniority and skill eventually took him on to the staff of the Commander in Chief of the Far East Fleet in 1967, with responsibility for overseeing the other chaplains in the command. It was now only a matter of time before he became Chaplain of the Fleet and Archdeacon for the Royal Navy. By 1969 the Service he had joined a quarter of a century earlier had been so reduced in size that the number of chaplains was no more than 100. It had at one point been over 500. The remaining ships were also smaller, so that chaplains usually served several. Their selection, training and subsequent ministries had therefore to be different, and Weekes's long experience proved to be invaluable. He became a Queen's Honorary Chaplain in 1969 and in the following year was appointed CB. On retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972 he spent a year as chaplain of St Andrew's Church in Tangier before becoming Dean of Gibraltar, whose cathedral still had strong naval links. In 1977 he was appointed as the first suffragan Bishop of Gibraltar. This Anglican diocese, later renamed Europe, had grown quickly as a result of the expansion of tourism and of English-speaking communities in many towns on the continent. Additional episcopal leadership was urgently needed, and Weekes, who had every gift for this, was soon travelling widely and making an impact on the chaplaincies, including those still in the Soviet empire. He was based in Brussels, where he was Dean of Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral. Following his retirement in 1986 Weekes returned to his old Medway haunts as an honorary assistant bishop in Rochester diocese, and an honorary canon of Rochester cathedral. After two years, however, he went back to Europe to resume his ministry in an honorary capacity, and until 1992 worked from the chaplaincy of Montreux with Gstaad in Switzerland. Thereafter he continued for many more years to be a welcome visitor of the European chaplaincies. He was a Fellow of King's College, London. The Right Reverend Ambrose Weekes, born April 25 1919, died April 24 2012