Here we quote Bishop Sarah Mullally from her address in Canterbury Cathedral, after her appointment was announced. Quotes come from the Religion Media Centre briefing are available to watch again or listen to via links here, and the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme on 5 October
On the historic appointment of a woman:
Sarah Mullally said in her address after being announced as the next Archbishop of Canterbury: “Some will be asking what it means for a woman to lead the Church of England, and to take on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s global role in the Anglican Communion. I intend be a shepherd who enables everyone’s ministry and vocation to flourish, whatever our tradition. Today I give thanks for all the women and men — lay and ordained; deacons, priests and bishops — who have paved the way for this moment. And to all the women that have gone before me. Thank you for your support and your inspiration.”
Bishop of Manchester, David Walker (on Sunday, Radio 4):
“We know that across many parts of the Anglican Communion, there are people rejoicing. I chair a global mission agency, USPG [United Society Partners in the Gospel]. My WhatsApp was absolutely full on Friday of people, particularly women from around the world, just so delighted that there is no sort of stained glass ceiling now. This means a lot to them, too, to women priests and laity in other parts of the world, including where women can’t be bishops at present.”
The Ven Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Archdeacon of Liverpool and member of the Archbishops’ Council (from RMC briefing):
“Last year we celebrated 10 years of women bishops, 30 years of women priests, and 80 years since Florence Li Tim-Oi was the first woman ordained in the Anglican Communion over in Hong Kong. So it just feels so momentous.”
The Rev Martine Oborne, chair of WATCH, Women and the Church (from RMC briefing):
“I’m delighted that we’re going to have our first female Archbishop of Canterbury. Having said that, I am sad that there are seven serving bishops who will not receive communion from her because she’s woman, one who doesn’t believe women should be in authority over men. And we still have 586 churches who limit women’s ministries”.
Canon Angela Tilby, canon emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (from Sunday, Radio 4):
Canon Angela Tilby told the Sunday programme that the appointment of a woman to the top job in the CofE had happened more quickly than she expected and pointed out that the journey began 100 years ago, coming out of the suffragette movement. Asked whether Bishop Mullally’s appointment ended the questions of legitimacy within the Church of England, at least, she said: “I don’t think it necessarily does. I mean, she’s been very adamant that we’ve got to leave space for those who on all kinds of theological grounds can’t yet accept ordained women. I think one of the great gifts of the Church of England is that it can genuinely contain difference and find honourable fudges to enable people to hold together, even with very different views.”
Forward in Faith, a group opposed to the ordination of women priests and bishops, recognised Bishop Mullally “as the true and lawful holder of that office, once it is conferred on her”. In a statement it said it believed the existing arrangements would remain, where bishops in their tradition were consecrated by bishops also in their tradition: “This will, we trust, continue to be the case.”
On her role in public life:
Bishop Mullally said: “Across our nation today, we are wrestling with complex moral and political questions. The legal right of terminally ill people to end their own lives. Our response to people fleeing war and persecution to seek safety and refuge. The pressures on communities who have been overlooked and undervalued. The deep-rooted question of who we are as a nation, in a world that is so often on the brink. Mindful of the horrific violence of yesterday’s attack on a synagogue in Manchester, we are witnessing hatred that rises up through fractures across our communities. I know that the God who is with us draws near to those who suffer. We then, as a church, have a responsibility to be a people who stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism in all its forms. Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart.”
Tim Wyatt, Anglican commentator and journalist (from RMC briefing):
“The word you’re going to hear a lot about Sarah Mullally is a safe pair of hands, a competent, experienced administrator, bureaucrat, with a long career in the NHS, before she got into ministry, who has run the diocese of London, a challenging post, successfully. But what people have more questions about is whether she has the charisma, the flair, the spiritual skill to act as pastor to the nation, to speak prophetically into national moments like the tragedy in Manchester. I think that’s more of an open question.”
Edward Nickell, trustee of the Sea of Faith Network (from RMC briefing):
“There are many people who don’t believe in God and would never darken the doors of a church, but do feel culturally connected to it, and for them, Sarah Mullally is probably the most prominent person they would see. And can Sarah speak to them, and not just to the regular attenders? When she says ‘I see it as one career, because I’ve been always seeking to live with compassion in the service of others, whether as a nurse, a priest or bishop’, I think those kind of quotes actually can speak to people who aren’t regular attenders in church, and can mean something to them and be interesting to them. So I’m really encouraged by that.”
Her qualities as a leader:
Sarah Mullally said: “I intend be a shepherd who enables everyone’s ministry and vocation to flourish, whatever our tradition. In living in the service of others, we must also confront the dynamics of power— an issue brought into sharp focus by the recent safeguarding reviews and reports. As a church, we have too often failed to recognise or take seriously the misuse of power in all its forms.”
Bishop of Coventry, Sophie Jelly (from RMC briefing):
“She’s served as a parish priest, which I think is really important as we wrestle with different models of ministry going forward in the Church of England. She obviously brings significant responsibility in from her former role as the government’s chief nursing officer, and I see her as both a wise and bold leader who’s able to occupy public space with the sense of being a very un-anxious presence, which I think at the moment in our world we need more than anything else. I think she’s incredibly courageous as a leader. Yes, she’s female, and she inhabits that space very authentically as a female leader.”
The Rev Marcus walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London and chairman of Save the Parish (from Sunday, Radio 4):
“She’s a very, I suppose you could say graceful leader. She’s a person who very, very much tries to find consensus, I think, even if she’s somewhat failed to do that, particularly with questions of sexuality and gay marriage and blessings in the national church. When dealing with her diocese, she’s been, certainly for the little portion of it that she’s directly in control of, the two cities, a very hands-on bishop in the right way, a very pastoral bishop I found, especially for those who don’t agree with her, like those in the traditionalist community. So she very much tries to reach out to people and to be personal and pastoral, which I very much like to see in the diocese of London.”
The Rev Angela Sheard, Anglican tutor in the ministerial formation team at Queen’s College Birmingham (from RMC briefing):
“Bishop Sarah is a choice that I’m personally absolutely delighted with, a historic appointment. Bishop Sarah was my bishop as a curate, and so I had a number of pastoral conversations with her over the course of my curacy. And that was what really stood out to me, actually, was her as a pastor and as someone with a with a nursing healthcare background, as well as someone with an interest in holistic care, care of the whole person. I think there’s a really interesting theme there running through into her ordained ministry. When speaking with students at my college about what they’re what they are concerned with, there’s a real focus on people and process, around Bishop Sarah’s ability to hold the two together — around issues of LLF [Living in Love and Faith], around issues of safeguarding, around issues of power and governance in terms of the structures of the church, she’s someone who’s really spoken about those things in ways which are both courageous and compassionate.”
The Rev Martine Oborne (from RMC briefing):
“I would like to see some more clarity in leadership. A good leader has to listen prayerfully to all opinions. But we have a process through synod for making decisions, and we can’t move forward with 100 per cent of people agreeing about [everything]. We do need leadership with clarity.”
The Rev Dr Charlie Baczyk-Bell, member of the general synod (from RMC briefing):
“Her speech this morning was just the most extraordinary pastoral conversation. It was beautiful, and it was also deeply human. And I hope we just have the time in the next six months as she prepares to go to Canterbury, and then in the first few years, just to give her the opportunity to flourish as herself, rather than as trying to kind of turn her into the thing that we all desperately want her to be.”
Justin Humphreys chief executive and head of safeguarding development at Thirtyone:eight (from RMC briefing):
“I think the questions of power, how power is managed and used, how that feeds the structure the cultures … I think is one of the key questions. I’d be really keen to see how Sarah is going to model a different type of leadership, different to maybe what we’ve seen before. I think it’s going to take courageous, compassionate leadership on Sarah’s part to hold things together and to model a different way, and I think that’s going to be absolutely critical to the rebuilding of much of the lost trust that has been seen in and across the Church of England to date.”
The Ven Miranda Threlfall-Holmes (from RMC briefing):
“There’s a real tendency … for people to divest ourselves of responsibility for being part of the change we want to see, and to blame the Archbishop of Canterbury, or whoever happens to be in those kind of leadership positions, for not doing things. She’s not going to let other people walk all over her, but she empowers and listens to other people. And I think we need to be a bit careful about using the word pastoral too much, because that’s quite a gendered attribute. I don’t want to paint Sarah into the box of being the woman and therefore the pastoral one. But the thing I’m really excited about is that she’s an incredibly effective leader. I’m not sure we’ve ever before had an Archbishop of Canterbury who, before they came into being a bishop, had already been knighted for service in another field. That is quite outstanding.”
Canon John Dunnett, national director of the Church of England Evangelical Council (from RMC briefing):
“I would want to plead with her to encourage in the House of Bishops a conversation about how is power managed in an episcopal church. Could we recalibrate our understanding of the relationship between bishops and unity? It seems to me, they should be maintainers of unity, not the focus of unity. It seems to me that we put an awful lot of hope in our diocesan bishops, and the archbishop’s, in that theology, law, safeguarding vision, all of these things land on their desk in their role. And I wonder whether we need somehow to encourage a conversation about how we can helpfully pull some of those things apart.”
The Rev Cathrine Ngangira, priest-in-charge at Boughton-under-Blean, Kent (from RMC briefing):
“She quoted an African proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together. And I think there is something there about recognising that this role is not something that she can do on her own, but something that she will need to do with others.”
Susie Leafe, director of Anglican Futures (from RMC briefing):
“I think if we think of pastoral being a shepherd who cuddles sheep, pretty little lambs, then that may be what people are getting at. I think there is a need for clarity. It isn’t to tell people that a shepherd leads the flock to good pasture. A shepherd points out where the walls are. A shepherd fights for the flock. Those are the things that are going to be needed to be done.”
On how the evangelicals will respond:
The Rev Dr Ian Paul, member of the Archbishops’ Council (from RMC briefing):
“I’m not sure anyone would say she’s someone who has big personality, big charisma. But do we want that from an archbishop? The one thing we don’t want is an archbishop who’s going to come in and fix things for us and solve our problems. We don’t need a saviour in an archbishop. We’ve already got a saviour. What we do want is someone we can trust, who will follow due process, who will listen well, and who would hold things together.”
Canon John Dunnett (from RMC briefing):
“This is a historic appointment, and I congratulate Bishop Sarah on it. I think for some of the folk that I work with and represent, there will be real concern because of Bishop Sarah’s leadership of the Living in Love and Faith process. I think at the same time, though, a number of us are thinking that in Bishop Sarah’s experience in London, she’s had to work with pretty substantial differences over all kinds of issues, such as the reality of impaired fellowship with episcopal colleagues. She’s no stranger to working with difference so I think a number of us are feeling, well, you know, there may be hope here, in that she might be able to reach for the unreachable as far as some are concerned. She might be able to think the unthinkable, and she might be someone who could help us find how we can maintain the highest degree of unity possible.”
On how the progressives will respond:
Professor Helen King, member of general synod and editor of ViaMedia News: “Bishop Sarah is known as one of the lead bishops for the Living in Love and Faith process, and when she was in charge of that, she was very, very good, listening to both sides and holding it together. I’m a little bit concerned about this lack of charisma claim. Sarah has an extraordinary presence, a quiet presence and an honest presence. One of the most impressive moments for me was at general synod recently when she talked about the microaggressions that she faces as a woman in ministry, and she was emotional about it. She was not ashamed to show that. And I think that sort of honesty pastoral care is what we really, really need at the moment from an archbishop.”
The Rev Dr Charlie Baczyk-Bell (from RMC briefing):
“I’m absolutely delighted. I just think she has been courageous as a bishop. I don’t recognise the idea of safe pair of hands or managerialism or anything. I’ve always seen her as incredibly pastoral and kind and inhabiting that Anglican thing of coming alongside people and being there for them through times of good times and bad times. And that’s how I feel that she was during the previous LLF process, and it’s how I imagine she’ll continue to be. I do think we’ve got to just be careful of loading everything on whoever the archbishop is and then expecting them somehow to resolve everything that’s ever been and that includes the LLF process. So I hope we can continue to work really well together. I’m delighted because Sarah is a standout pastor, and for me, that feels to be exactly what the church needs in the way that we are at the moment and at such a time as the one we find ourselves to be in.”
On safeguarding:
In her address on taking up her appointment, Sarah Mullally said: “As archbishop, my commitment will be to ensure that we continue to listen to survivors, care for the vulnerable, and foster a culture of safety and well-being for all. This will not be easy. Our history of safeguarding failures have left a legacy of deep harm and mistrust, and we must all be willing to have light shone on our actions, regardless of our role in the church. Since my ordination, I have witnessed a significant professional and cultural shift in safeguarding. I know the National Safeguarding Team continues to work tirelessly alongside diocesan professionals and countless parish volunteers, to ensure that we are a church that not only prevents abuse, but responds well when it is reported. Safeguarding is everyone’s business. But for those of us in senior leadership, it carries an added weight of accountability.”
As the Crown Nominations Commission was deciding who would be the next archbishop, there were questions raised over the prospect of Sarah Mullally being appointed, with concern that her record on safeguarding as Bishop of London, would count against her. However, in the days since her appointment, no new case or criticism has come to light.
Cathy Newman, Channel 4 News, ran a story on Saturday about a case that the CofE will face as she takes office. Relatives of boys abused at a camp run by John Smyth in Zimbabwe, were preparing to sue St Andrew the Great church in Cambridge, incorporating the Round Church. Its vicar Mark Ruston, compiled a report about Smyth’s abuse in 1982 but it was not reported to the police until 2013. Smyth was allowed to leave for Zimbabwe in 1984. Edith Nyachuru, the sister of a boy who died at the Zimbabwe camp said her brother would still be alive if the church had acted earlier.
Andrew Graystone, journalist, author and safeguarding campaigner (from Sunday ,BBC Radio 4):
“First, I want to say I celebrate the fact that the church has appointed a woman as archbishop. This particular appointment has caused real shock and dismay amongst victims and survivors who’ve been in touch with me. I think we really thought that after Justin Welby that the church would want to appoint someone with a clean sheet with regard to safeguarding and I’m afraid that’s not Bishop Sarah. I hear from people every week who’ve been harmed in the Church of England and more of them are from the Diocese of London than from any other diocese … She’s certainly a pastoral person, and I know that she’s been prepared to meet face to face. But some clergy and church offices in the London diocese have been complicit in abuse when they ignored what was often hiding in plain sight before their eyes. And those aren’t my words, those are Bishop Sarah’s words about her own diocese. I think we had hoped as a new archbishop to be able to move the church forward in safeguarding practices, but I’m not sure that this does that.”
The Rt Rev David Walker, Bishop of Manchester (from Sunday, BBC Radio 4):
“I’d want to give Andrew some reassurance. I’ve worked with Bishop Sarah as members of the National Safeguarding Steering Group for the Church of England. I’ve listened to the speeches that she’s made at general synod, very strongly pro the working with survivors and independence of safeguarding. She’s recently chaired the Triennium Funding Working Group, which has set aside a very significant sum of money to enable safeguarding to be strengthened across our churches. She’s doing what a bishop needs to do. She’s making sure the culture is right and the resources are right, and that’s what she will do as archbishop. That’s what she’s started to do in a very difficult diocese in London, and I’m very confident she’ll carry that on and she’ll win the confidence of survivors.”
“Gilo”, a survivor of abuse by a clergyman in the Church of England in the 1970s told Premier Christian News that he was critical of the bishop’s handling of the Elliot safeguard review into lack of action on his complaint. He said: “This is not a day that many survivors will greet with excitement. There are notable bishops who I think are determined to see cultural shift, particularly around accountability and transparency and integrity, right at the very top of the church, in the senior tier. I think that sadly, Bishop Mullally is the continuity candidate after Archbishop Welby. I don’t think she particularly represents a desire or willingness to bring about accountability.”
Jane Chevous, director of Survivors’ Voices, said:
“I’m aware of survivors with concerns, but I am also aware of survivors with experience of her safeguarding actions who have found them helpful. So to be fair the reactions are mixed. There was a safeguarding process as part of the appointment process, and survivor involvement.”
Justin Humphreys (from RMC briefing):
“Bishop Sarah has an opportunity here to draw a line in the sand, and to say things will change from this point forward. What I’d say to victim survivors, those whose experience of the church has been harmful and negative, and the mixed views that there are around Sarah’s appointment is that, I hear that, and I’ve seen some of that. We have to move forward, look to the future, at the same time as holding very clearly to the experiences that we’ve seen evident in the past. And it’s that sense of lament that we must operate with that informs our future endeavours, I think, is absolutely critical here. People and process have to go together, and it seems that Sarah may be the sort of person that can hold those things together and make some positive progress. It’s going to be a big job.”
The Rev Dr Ian Paul (from RMC briefing):
“I hope, I pray, that the February synod will draw a line under the Living in Love and Faith process. The most contentious things around safeguarding have been [done]. The last major block put in place is the redress scheme that’s also going to be signed off. There is a sense in which Sarah comes into this potentially with a lot of the really contentious stuff, having had a line drawn under it. And I think if she can come in with a sense of a clean sheet on a lot of these issues, which really dogged Justin Welby’s time. I think that will be really helpful.”
Tim Wyatt (from: RMC briefing)
“I think it’s fascinating that the CNC, the committee that appointed her, has decided to go for Sarah Mullally, despite her quite high-profile involvement in one, at least one, high-profile safeguarding scandal in her own diocese. That was the case of Alan Griffin, who was a retired Anglican priest who killed himself in the middle of a somewhat botched safeguarding investigation. She wasn’t obviously directly responsible for the safeguarding investigation, but there are a lot of clergy in the diocese of London who remain very upset about her role in that very sad story. And so I think it is incumbent on her to very quickly find a kind of way of explaining and rationalising her place in that story, otherwise it could really dog her ability to draw a line and move the church forward on that issue.”
Impact on the worldwide Anglican Communion:
Bishop Mullally said: “Last summer, I found myself in three Anglican churches — in three different countries — in rapid succession. In Brazil, Canada and Barbados. In each one I was able to follow the liturgy without hesitation: morning prayer, the eucharist, collective prayers for the people; the rhythms of Anglican worship echoed with familiar grace. I saw something deeply distinctive, coupled with mutual understanding: a shared inheritance of history, of family of worship, sacrament and word — made real in global diversity. Anglican churches and networks around the world working together in mission, joining their voices in advocacy for those in need. In an age that craves certainty and tribalism, Anglicanism offers something quieter but stronger: shared history, held in tension, shaped by prayer, and lit from within by the glory of Christ. That is what gives me hope. In our fractured and hurting world, that partnership in the Gospel could not be more vital.”
Gafcon, a global organisation of conservative Anglican churches that began in 2008 in opposition to progressive moves on same-sex relationships, issued this statement:
“It is with sorrow that Gafcon receives the announcement today of the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This appointment abandons global Anglicans, as the Church of England has chosen a leader who will further divide an already split communion … Though there are some who will welcome the decision to appoint Bishop Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy. Therefore, her appointment will make it impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a focus of unity within the communion.” The statement said ait would “reset” the communion and called a conference in Nigeria in March 2026, saying “This may be the most significant gathering of faithful Anglicans since 2008”, when it was founded.
Susie Leafe (from RMC briefing):
“So I think there will be a sense of sadness. I think there will be a sense of separation, but perhaps no more than has happened in the past. I think the significant thing about what Gafcon have said is that they’ve pointed to their next mini-conference, taking place in Abuja in Nigeria, next March, probably around the same sort of time that the Archbishop of Canterbury will be placed on her throne, and that’s quite a challenge. They’ve talked about that as possibly being the most significant meeting of faithful Anglicans since 2008 which is when Gafcon was formed. This is not just a gender issue, it’s also a sexuality issue, but underlying both of those things, from the perspective of the global church, that will be a sense of how we go back to historic biblical understanding of the Scriptures.”
The Rev Dr Peniel Rajkumar, theologian with United Society Partners in the Gospel (from RMC briefing):
“What I heard from primates who may be on a different page with Bishop Sarah on these things is how they like her as a person. And that is something that we should not lose sight of, how people have known her, the warmth that she brings, the pastoral and the leadership skills that she has exhibited throughout her time. There is hope, therefore, that this will be something of a kairos moment, where the change and the challenge that this appointment will bring will be embraced with a spirit of hope and hospitality.”
The Very Rev Winnie Varghese, Dean of the Cathedral St John the Divine, New York (from RMC briefing):
“I think I can speak on behalf of a lot of people that are really excited. We don’t know Bishop Sarah in quite in the way that you all do, so we can’t speak to her remarkable giftedness that has brought her to this point. But we do remember when we had a woman as our presiding bishop, what happened in our church, and how important it was to clarify a thing that had sort of been a looming threat for a while, about what that kind of diversity and leadership would mean, and frankly, clarify our values. Like most women who have been the first woman in every role that I’ve been in, it’s interesting how symbolically important it is, and how much of the culture around us responds to that and responds to what they see as a fairly entrenched institution open to the full diversity of leadership. So we’re really excited here.”
The Rev Cathrine Ngangira (from RMC briefing)
“In the Anglican Church in Africa, definitely there are some who are open and have received and have made much progress in terms of receiving leadership from women, and there are some who have not yet done so. So I think there’s going to be a holy tension in terms of how that will be received. I think first and foremost is just who she is as a person. She is a warm person who intends to be a shepherd, enabling everyone’s ministries and vocation to flourish. And I think everyone is seeking an archbishop who has that pastoral approach.”
On ecumenical relations:
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales:
Cardinal Nichols issued a statement: “On behalf of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, I welcome the news of the appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. She will bring many personal gifts and experience to her new role. The challenges and opportunities facing the new archbishop are many and significant. On behalf of our Catholic community, I assure her of our prayers. Together we will be responsive to the prayer of Jesus that we ‘may all be one’ (John 17:21) and seek to develop the bonds of friendship and shared mission between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.”
Catherine Pepinster, journalist and author (from RMC briefing):
“It’s going to be a really interesting one for the Roman Catholic Church, which doesn’t have women priests or bishops. There have been women priests, who’ve gone to the Vatican on visits with previous archbishops of Canterbury. Both Rowan Williams and Justin Welby took women chaplains with them, and they would be on the altar with various Catholic cardinals. It’s a different league, I think, for the Archbishop of Canterbury to be a woman. So I’ll be interested to see how Rome deals with that. On the other hand, actually, ever since the time of the previous Pope Leo, Pope Leo XIII, the Catholic church still hasn’t formally recognised any Anglican orders, yet they managed to develop relations with the Anglicans. And they say things like, well, they’re not our orders, but we recognise there’s something there. So much of it will be down to character, I think, and how individuals get on. A lot of people have been talking about how much Sarah Mullally is so personable, and she gets on with people. And a lot of people have told me that Pope Leo is very comfortable around women. Sarah Mullally has worked quite closely with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, because he’s Archbishop of Westminster and she’s been Bishop of London. So perhaps sometimes the interaction the dynamic between individuals is what carries things through. But to see the Archbishop of Canterbury with her crosier on an altar of a Catholic church in Rome will be a remarkable moment.”
And finally:
Tim Wyatt (from RMC briefing):
“There is a mandatory retirement age for all bishops of 70, and she will be very nearly 64 by the time she takes up the role. So she’ll have a maximum of six years in post, which all the way to the Second World War, is bar one, the shortest tenure of any archbishop. They typically do at least 10 years, if not longer, because it takes that several years simply to get to grips with the complex internal machinery of the institution of the church, let alone introduce yourself to the watching nation. And by the time she’s got into, got settled in, she will be seen as a bit of a lame duck archbishop by some, because she’ll be approaching the end of her tenure. So it will be very fascinating to see to what extent she might be seen as a kind of interim turnaround handover archbishop.”
