LONDON (RNS) — When Sarah Mullally is installed as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday (March 25), it will be an extraordinary occasion not only for the most obvious reason that she is the first woman ever to lead the Church of England and serve as convener of the Anglican Communion: As a former chief nurse of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, Mullally is also the first archbishop of Canterbury to have led a major public agency in the country.
In the congregation at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent on Wednesday, along with royals, politicians, clergy from around the world and schoolchildren, will be representatives from the NHS, testifying to Mullally’s accomplishments before she was ordained in 2002.
In another first, at least in recent memory, she took part in a pilgrimage, walking the 87 miles from St Paul’s Cathedral in her London diocese, where she has been bishop since 2018, to Canterbury.
But it is Mullally’s gender that will be the most remarked upon part of her ascent, from her birth in Woking, southwest of London, and her beginnings as a nurse at St. Thomas Hospital in central London to “first among equals” among Anglican bishops. Her groundbreaking first will be emphasized by taking place on the F …