Bishop Oliver has spent 13 years in the post

The Right Reverend John Oliver, whose diocese covers south Shropshire, will be retiring in November, after 13 years in the post.

He is one of the country's most senior Bishops who sits in the House of Lords and is also the Church of England's official spokesman on rural affairs.

Bishop Oliver made the announcement over the weekend following a diocesan synod meeting in which he voiced some controversial views on Iraq.

Deeply shameful

He said at the meeting on Saturday, going to war was better than standing by and letting Saddam Hussein kill thousands more of his own people.

He said there had been a great deal of "simplistic and naive support for the stop the war campaign".

Speaking at his diocesan synod meeting in Hereford on Saturday he said stop the war supporters "could not have thought through the implications of what they were saying".

He said casualties from a quick military strike would be a fraction of the deaths caused by Saddam Hussein's regime, and war may be the least morally repugnant course of action.

Bishop Oliver described going to war as a deeply shameful thing and there had not been enough rigorous analysis of the moral dilemma.

Meanwhile hundreds of people gathered outside the Labour Party conference in Malvern to take part in an anti-war protest on Saturday.