Dame Sarah Mullally has been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, becoming the first woman to hold the Church of England’s highest clerical office in its nearly 500-year history. According to the BBC, her selection ends an interregnum of almost a year following Justin Welby’s resignation in the wake of an abuse scandal.
Background and the road to today
Anticipation had built ahead of the announcement, with both women and men bishops in discussions over the succession. It is worth noting how recent the timeline for women’s leadership has been within the Church: women were only permitted to be ordained as priests in 1994, and the first women were appointed as bishops two decades later, in 2014.
Among the names floated for the role were Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, who left Iran as a teenager with her family, and Rachel Treweek, the Bishop of Gloucester. On the men’s side, Michael Beasley, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Pete Wilcox, Bishop of Sheffield, were also reportedly considered.
Mullally’s prior distinction
Mullally had already stood out since 2018, when she was consecrated Bishop of London. In her first sermon in that role, she spoke openly about the challenges facing the capital, highlighting the rise in knife crime, and addressed historic instances of sexual abuse within the Church.
Recalling that 105 years earlier suffragettes had attempted to place a bomb beneath the throne on which she had just been enthroned, she quipped:
“Let me reassure you, I do not carry bombs - at least not literally! But I recognise that, as the first woman Bishop of London, I am necessarily subversive. And that subversion is something I intend to embrace.”
Why it matters
Her historic elevation as Archbishop of Canterbury marks a new page for the Church of England. With a woman now in its highest office, the Church signals an intent to confront contemporary social and spiritual challenges while building on the progress of recent decades in representation and accountability.
