Sarah Mullally named firstfemale Archbishop of Canterbury

Bishop of London Sarah Mullally shattered a stained-glass ceiling Friday when she was announced as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the first time a woman has been chosen as the Church of England’s spiritual leader.
Mullally, 63, a former cancer nurse who became England’s youngest chief nursing officer before joining the clergy, faces serious challenges in the church that include divisions over the treatment of women and LGBTQ people.
She will also have to confront concerns that church leaders haven’t done enough to stamp out the sexual abuse scandals that have dogged the church for more than a decade.
The choice of Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury-designate marks a major milestone for a church that ordained its first female priests in 1994 and its first female bishop in 2015.
She follows 105 men who have held the role since St. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597.
“There was a time where female priests — the idea of that — seemed absurd,” said George Gross, an expert on monarchy and modern religious thought at King’s College London.
“But we’ve moved a long way from that. And if you can have a female prime minister, you have a female monarch, it seems, why can’t you have the female archbishop of Canterbury?”
Mullally will replace former archbishop Justin Welby, who announced his resignation in November after an independent investigation found he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.
“The new archbishop will be faced with declining church attendance, bloated management structures and clergy squabbling over what people do in the bedroom,” said Andrew Graystone, an advocate for church abuse survivors. “But the biggest challenge for the new archbishop is to restore trust after a decade of abuse scandals.”