Robt. Wolterstorff, 92; first Episcopal bishop of San Diego

The Right Rev. Robert M. Wolterstorff, who became the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego when it was carved out of the sprawling Los Angeles Diocese in 1974, has died. He was 92.

Wolterstorff died in his sleep Tuesday in San Diego, 10 days after suffering a heart attack, diocese spokesman Howard Smith said.

Before he became bishop, Wolterstorff served in San Diego for 20 years as rector and assistant rector at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla.

Wolterstorff made organizing the diocese his top priority.

“My job is to be the pastor for the whole diocese and try to knit us into a family,” he told the San Diego Union newspaper in 1974. The new diocese had 39 congregations and 20,000 members.

Wolterstorff was known for his optimism, steadfast faith and values.

“The combination of those made him an inspirational leader,” said Susan Mallory, a local bank president who had known him since 1957. “He was a unifier.”

Wolterstorff’s tenure as bishop also was marked by controversy.

The Episcopal Church voted to ordain women as priests in 1976, but Wolterstorff held fast to his belief that only men should be ordained.

In 1984, two years after his retirement, Patricia Bush became the first woman to be ordained as a priest in the San Diego Diocese.

Wolterstorff was born in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 29, 1914. He earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, and graduated from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill.

Ordained a deacon in 1940 and priest in 1941, Wolterstorff served as rector of St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla from 1957 to 1974.

He also was a lifetime trustee of the Bishop’s School in La Jolla and had served on its board in the 1970s when the girls boarding school became coed and converted to a daytime campus.

Wolterstorff’s wife, Helen, died in 1994. He is survived by daughters Ann Love of El Cajon and Mary Hunter of Encinitas; sons Walter of Lodi and Robert Jr. of Cos Cob, Conn.; 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.