Who might be the next archbishop of Canterbury?
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The Church of England is on the search for the 106th archbishop of Canterbury. The role had been held for more than a decade by Justin Welby, until his resignation over failures in handling a church abuse scandal. There are more than 100 bishops in the Church of England, including 42 diocesan bishops.
Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell appeared to rule himself out last year, and has since faced calls to resign over perceived failures in his handling of a separate abuse case. Here, the PA news agency takes a look at some of the names who could be in the running.
– Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London. The former nurse was the youngest person to be appointed chief nursing officer for England in 1999. She sits in the House of Lords and was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council in March 2018. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2005 for her contribution to nursing and midwifery.
She is married with two children and is a novice potter. She is taking on the metropolitan functions usually held by the archbishop of Canterbury in the interim period while the post is vacant. – Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford. Born in Iran, Bishop Guli’s family fled in the wake of the Iranian revolution in 1980, when she was just a teenager.
Her brother Bahram was murdered in the revolution, and she previously spoke about how it affected her family. She told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “We’ve spent a lifetime coming to terms with it. In a sense, it was his sacrifice that brought us here. I don’t think my mum and my sister and I would have left if we hadn’t had a very good reason to.
