Dame Sarah Mullally was installed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday in a 90-minute ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral that was heavy with history and light on pretence. The former chief nursing officer of England knocked three times on the great west door, was let in by local schoolchildren, and took her seat in the 13th-century Chair of St Augustine before some 2,000 guests, including the Prince and Princess of Wales and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
She is the first woman to hold the post in its 1,429-year history. The fact that this needs stating in 2026 says something about the Church of England. The fact that it happened at all says something about Mullally.
The Path to Canterbury
Mullally's route to the top of the Anglican hierarchy is unlike any of her predecessors. She trained as a nurse, specialising in oncology, and rose through the NHS to become chief nursing officer in 1999 — the government's most senior nursing adviser. She left the NHS in 2004 to pursue full-time ministry, was ordained as a priest, and became Bishop of Crediton in 2015 and then Bishop of London in 2018. She was announced as the next Archbishop of Canterbury in October 2025, following Justin Welby's resignation over the Church's handling of abuse allegations.
Her appointment was not universally welcomed. The Global Anglican Future Conference, known as Gafcon — a conservative bloc of Anglican churches concentrated in Africa and Asia — had initially threatened to appoint a parallel figurehead in protest at a woman leading the Communion. They backed down this month, opting instead to establish a new council, but the underlying theological division remains unresolved. Approximately 85 million of the Communion's 100 million members belong to provinces that do not ordain women as bishops.
The Church She Inherits
Mullally takes charge of an institution in managed decline. Church of England attendance has fallen below one million for the first time in recorded history. The average age of a regular churchgoer is 61. Fewer than 2% of the English population attends an Anglican service on any given Sunday. The Church's finances are sustained largely by its historic investment portfolio — the Church Commissioners manage assets worth approximately £10.3 billion — rather than by the generosity of a shrinking congregation.
The abuse crisis that precipitated Welby's departure has not been resolved. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found systemic failures across the Church, and survivors' groups have said that Mullally's appointment means nothing unless it is accompanied by structural reform. The new Archbishop has promised to make safeguarding her "first priority," but promises from Canterbury have been made and broken before.
What She Represents
Mullally's installation is a milestone, but milestones are not the same as transformations. The Church of England ordained its first women priests in 1994 and its first women bishops in 2015. Each step was treated as revolutionary at the time and unremarkable within a few years. The same pattern will likely apply here. Within a decade, the idea that an Archbishop of Canterbury could only be male will seem as archaic as the idea that a bishop could only be male seemed before 2015.
The more interesting question is whether Mullally can do anything about the institution's deeper crisis — not of gender, but of relevance. The Church of England is the established church of a country that is, by every measurable standard, post-Christian. Its cathedrals are magnificent. Its parishes are empty. Its moral authority, once immense, has been eroded by the abuse scandal and by a decades-long failure to speak clearly on the issues that matter to the public. Mullally has the intelligence and the institutional knowledge to address this. Whether the Church will let her is another matter entirely.