“We walk with God – trusting that God walks with us. Trusting that in all that we face, in the sorrow and the challenges, as much as in the joy and the delight – we do not walk alone,'' Mullally said in her first sermon in the post. “There is hope because we are invited to trust that God will do a new thing."
The ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral was attended by Prince William, Princess Catherine, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and representatives from many of the communion’s 42 member churches. Representatives from the Vatican and the Orthodox church also attended.
In a nod to Mullally’s historic appointment, the service was held on the Feast of the Annunciation, which marks the moment Mary was told she had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus. It is a day on which the church says it celebrates “one of the great women of the Bible and thinks about how we can respond to God’s call.”
The celebration marks a major milestone for the Church of England, which traces its roots to the year 597, when the pope sent St. Augustine to Britain to convert the population to Christianity. He is now recognized as the first archbishop of Canterbury. The English church broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, during the reign of King Henry VIII.
The church ordained its first female priests in 1994 and its first female bishop in 2015.
Rifts in the Anglican Communion
Mullally begins her tenure as archbishop at a difficult time for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, whose members are deeply divided over issues such as the role of women and the treatment of LGBTQ+ people.
Mullally will also have to confront concerns that the church has failed to stamp out the sexual abuse scandals that have dogged it and caused strife for more than a decade.
Mullally replaces former Archbishop Justin Welby, who announced his resignation in November 2024, after he was criticized for failing to act decisively and tell police about allegations of physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at a church-affiliated summer camp.
In an interview with the BBC this week, Mullally said the church was “seeking to become more trauma informed, listening to survivors and victims of abuse." She added that “light should be shone on all our actions, and the more senior we are, the more light should be shone.''
In her sermon, Mullally said she had "such hope'' for the church and considered ways big and small in which she found God in action.
"In the ordinary and extraordinary life of the church we see God’s hand at work — the Church rolling up its sleeves and getting stuck in, where God is already at work: in the local and the global,'' she said.
“The Church, through the ordinary lives of its people, contains so many extraordinary acts of love: God’s people, offering a listening ear, a word of encouragement, or prayer for healing; offering food and shelter, sanctuary and welcome; in a world that so often seeks to divide us, tables to sit at and conversations to be shared.”
From nurse to archbishop
Born in Woking, southwest of London in 1962, Mullally attended local schools and worked as a nurse in Britain’s National Health Service until she was named chief nursing officer for England at the age of 37, the youngest person ever to hold the post.
While still working in that job, she began training for the ministry.
She was named a bishop in 2015, becoming the fourth woman in the Church of England to reach that rank. Three years later, she was named bishop of London, one of the most prominent positions in the church.
The admission of women was not without controversy and some conservative churches have expressed disquiet about Mullally's installation. Archbishop Henry Ndukuba of the Church of Nigeria said her election to the role was “devastating” and insensitive “to the conviction of the majority of Anglicans who are unable to embrace female headship in the episcopate.”
But Wednesday focused on the joy of a new start, rather than longstanding disagreements.
Mullally remembered her life before the church, securing her ceremonial cloak with a clasp decorated by the buckle from the belt she wore as a nurse. Nurses and schoolchildren welcomed her after she knocked on the great cathedral's west door, symbolically seeking admission.
The service showed the Anglican Communion’s worldwide reach, with Archbishop Albert Chama of Zambia offering a prayer in the Bemba language and Bishop Alba Sally Sue Hernández García of Mexico providing a Bible reading in Spanish. The Kyrie prayer was sung in Urdu.
George Gross, an expert on theology and the monarchy at King’s College London, said Mullally's appointment instantly makes her one of the most recognized Christian figures in the world, alongside the pope.
“I think it’s huge, absolutely massive,” he told The Associated Press. “It matters because ... the stained glass ceiling is smashed. And that, in the world we’re in, when we talk of equality, (it's) hard to have that if you have unattainable positions.”