Bishop

==== Duties ====

[[File:Confirmation VanderWeyden.png|thumb|upright|A bishop administering Confirmation. [[Rogier van der Weyden]], ''[[Seven Sacraments Altarpiece|The Seven Sacraments]]'', 15th century. In the Latin Church of the Catholic Church the administration of [[Confirmation]] is normally reserved to the local bishop.]]
[[File:Henning Toft Bro1 (bispevielse).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Church of Denmark|Danish Lutheran]] [[bishops]] wearing a [[cope]] over [[cassock]], [[surplice]], [[ruff (clothing)|ruff]] and [[pectoral cross]]]]
In [[Catholicism]], [[Eastern Orthodoxy]], [[Oriental Orthodoxy]], [[High Church Lutheranism]], and [[Anglicanism]], only a bishop can ordain other bishops, priests, and deacons.<ref name="COS2022">{{cite web |title=Ministry and Ministries |url=https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/ministry-and-ministries |publisher=[[Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden]] |access-date=4 February 2022 |language=English}}</ref>

In the Eastern liturgical tradition, a priest can celebrate the [[Divine Liturgy]] only with the blessing of a bishop. In Byzantine usage, an [[antimins|antimension]] signed by the bishop is kept on the altar partly as a reminder of whose altar it is and under whose [[omophorion]] the priest at a local parish is serving. In Syriac Church usage, a consecrated wooden block called a [[thabilitho]] is kept for the same reasons.

The bishop is the ordinary minister of the [[Sacraments of the Catholic Church|sacrament]] of confirmation in the Latin Church, and in the [[Old Catholic]] communion only a bishop may administer this sacrament. In the [[Lutheran]] and [[Anglican]] churches, the bishop normatively administers the rite of confirmation, although in those denominations that do not have an episcopal polity, confirmation is administered by the priest.<ref name="Wordsworth1911">{{cite book |last1=Wordsworth |first1=John |title=The National Church of Sweden |date=1911 |publisher=A. R. Mowbray & Company Limited |isbn=978-0-8401-2821-8 |page=168 |language=English |quote=This same archbishop compiled a code of the statues of his diocese, from which we may learn much as to the administration of the sacraments customary in Sweden. The three forms just named were to be taught to children by their parents and god-parents. Children of seven years old and upwards were to be confirmed by the bishop fasting—the implication that if they were confirmed at an earlier age they need not fast. No one was to be confirmed more than once, and parents were frequently to remind their children by whom and where they were confirmed. Bishops might change names in confirmation, and no one is to be admitted to minor orders without confirmation.}}</ref> However, in the [[Byzantine Rite|Byzantine]] and other Eastern rites, whether Eastern or Oriental Orthodox or [[Eastern Catholic]], [[chrismation]] is done immediately after [[baptism]], and thus the priest is the one who confirms, using chrism blessed by a bishop.<ref>[https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3U.HTM Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1313] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927014929/https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P3U.HTM |date=27 September 2011 }}</ref>