The Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan is expected to separate officially on Sunday, 41 years after joining the Anglican Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will travel to Khartoum this weekend to preside over the inauguration of Sudan as an autonomous Province.

Sudan will become the 39^th Province of the Anglican Communion.

This means the two countries will have their own independent entities under the Anglican Communion.

“The Primate and the Archbishop of South Sudan will not have any power in the province of Sudan; likewise that one in Sudan will not have any authority on the Episcopal Church of South Sudan,” said John Augustino Lumori, Secretary-General of the Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan.

He said the two provinces will be answerable to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Sudan became an independent Province of the Episcopal Church in 1976, after being under the Church of Jerusalem directly under Archbishop Welby for unspecified period of time.

In 2011, after independence of South Sudan, it was named the Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan but served under one Archbishop, Daniel Deng Bul.

In a meeting of the synod last year in Juba, it was proposed that Sudan should be an independent province of the Episcopal Church.

It was passed by the Anglican Communion after an assessment of its capability.

“So, we will just be calling ourselves as sister provinces,” Augustino added.

Archbishop Welby will arrive in Khartoum on Saturday and travel to the Diocese of Kadugli, one of five dioceses making up the new Province of Sudan.

He will then travel to northern Uganda to meet some of the 900,000 South Sudanese refugees residing in the districts of Moyo and Adjumani.