Sarah Mullally, the first woman named Chief of the Anglican Church

London Bishop Sarah Mullally was named Canterbury Archbispa on Friday (3), becoming Anglican spiritual leader and the first woman to head the Church of England. The British government announced in a statement that King Charles III, as the Supreme Leader of the Anglican Church, approved the appointment proposed by the Canterbury Cathedral College of Cathedral in southeastern England. Mullally, 63, mother of two, replaces Justin Welby, who was forced to resign in November 2024 due to her conduct of a scandal of physical and sexual aggression. The religious, who left her nurse’s work in 2004 to devote herself to the full-time priesthood, becomes the 106th Archbisp of Canterbury. In a statement, Archbispa recognized the “great responsibility” of its new position, but declared to feel a sense of “peace and trust in God” to fulfill it. – “Fundamental Role” – British Prime Minister Keir Strmer celebrated the appointment of the first woman for this position. “The Anglican Church is of profound importance to this country. Its churches, cathedrals, schools and charities are part of the structure of our communities,” he said in a statement. The new Archbispa “will play a key role in our national life,” he added. World Anglicanism leader Justin Welby announced in November that he would leave his duties on January 6. Welby, 68, faced days of pressure to resign after the accusations that his institution covered physical and sexual assaults against a lawyer by a lawyer linked to her for years. Former Canterbury Archbishop has operated on several important real events in recent years, such as Queen Elizabeth II funeral and Charles III coronation. His resignation was linked to the case of John Smyth, a lawyer who presided over an institution of charity linked to the Anglican Church and organized holiday camps. Between the 1970s and the mid -2010s, Smyth sexually abused 130 children and young people in the United Kingdom and then in Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where he settled and died in 2018, at 75, without being tried. The institution was officially informed of these facts in 2013, but many members had known them since the 1980s and kept them silent as part of a “cover -up campaign,” concluded an investigation commissioned by the Anglican Church itself. The report also concluded that the archbishop of Canterbury “could and should have denounced” the police the violence committed by the lawyer from 2013, when he became a primacy of the Church of England. – “We failed”- Mullally promised on Friday “to promote a culture of safety and well-being for all” after cases of sexual aggression that shook the institution. “As a church, we often fail to recognize or take the abuses of power seriously in all their forms,” ​​she said in a speech at Canterbury Cathedral. The Church of England became the state religious organ after the rupture of King Henry VIII with Catholicism in the sixteenth century. Mullally became the first Bishop of London in 2018, after the Anglican Church began to allow women to hold this position in 2014, after years of fierce internal disputes. The Anglican Church, whose supreme leader is King Charles III, has 20 million faithful baptized, but the number of regular practitioners is estimated in just under 1 million, according to data from 2022. More than 40 of the 108 Bishops of England are now women, with a similar proportion between the priests, after the female clergy was first allowed in the early 190s. PSR/AN/DBH/AA/JC

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