MICHAEL Scott-Joynt, who died last week aged 71, served for almost 16 years as the Bishop of Winchester, the diocese which covers most of Bournemouth and the eastern part of Dorset.

He read classics and theology at Kings College, Cambridge, and was ordained in 1967 after training at Cuddesdon Theological College, Oxford.

He was Bishop of Stafford from 1987-96 before becoming Britain’s fifth highest-ranking bishop in 1995, at the age of 52.

He visited Bournemouth within days of his enthronement in January 1996, meeting clergy and parishioners. That March, he met clergy at Christchurch and spent the day visiting Burton, Bisterne, Ringwood and St Ives and St Leonards.

The new Bishop had declared his concerns about the widening gap between richer and poorer people. He told the Daily Echo, on his first visit to Dorset as Bishop, that he was worried about the hardships faced by benefit claimants and pensioners and by society’s treatment of prisoners. He called for more “social justice and compassion”.

On issues of marriage and sexuality, he was a traditionalist, speaking against plans to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which banned the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by public bodies.

He chaired the church body that produced the report Marriage in Church After Divorce, outlining the criteria that clergy should apply when deciding whether to marry people who had been wed before. He declined to comment on whether the criteria would have prevented the Prince of Wales marrying Camilla Parker Bowles.

The Bishop said the Christian view of marriage had become “very far indeed from where contemporary English society – and its media that so shapes it – now is in relation to marriage and sexual behaviour”. There was a widespread “fear and hostility towards commitment of marriage”, he added.

In September 2002, the Bishop spoke out against the likelihood of war in Iraq, telling the Echo: “Even if very, very occasionally necessary, war is always wrong and terrible.”

He added: “Talk of war slips off people’s tongues as something very easy, yet we have to be extremely wary of reaching that position where war seems thinkable.”

Michael Scott-Joynt’s hobbies included hill walking, opera and watching Match of the Day.

On his retirement in 2011, he became an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Portsmouth.

He leaves behind his wife Lou and three adult children, Hannah, Jeremy and Matthew.