She worked in the UK’s state-run National Health Service for more than three decades, rising to become its chief nursing officer for England in 1999.
A former midwife made history on Wednesday when she was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to lead the centuries-old church of the world's 85 million-strong Anglican community.
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Sarah Mullally, 63, was formally installed in a historic ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England in front of around 2,000 people including heir to the throne Prince William and his wife Catherine.
In accordance with tradition, the ceremony began with Mullally knocking three times with a staff on the cathedral's west door to request admission.
Dressed in deep yellow-gold robes, she was greeted by local schoolchildren who asked why she had been sent.
"I am sent as archbishop to serve you, to proclaim the love of Christ and with you to worship and love him with heart and soul, mind and strength," she responded.
The ceremony then culminated with Mullally being seated in two different thrones.
The seats symbolise the dual responsibilities of the role; as a bishop in the diocese of Canterbury and as the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide.
Mullally's predecessor Justin Welby announced his resignation as head of the Church of England in November 2024 over failures in handling an abuse scandal.
He stepped down after a report found the Church of England had covered up a 1970s serial abuse case and that he failed to report the abuses to authorities when they came to his attention in 2013.
Chief nurse
Mullally has stressed her commitment to "do all I can to ensure that the Church becomes safer and also responds well to victims and survivors of abuse."
The church was "seeking to become more trauma informed, listening to survivors and victims of abuse," she said in an interview with the BBC this week.
The Church of England became the country's state establishment church following King Henry VIII's split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s.
The British monarch is its supreme governor, while the Archbishop of Canterbury is seen as the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide.
Mullally, who is married with two children, becomes the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, the first having been appointed in the late sixth century.
She worked in the UK’s state-run National Health Service for more than three decades, rising to become its chief nursing officer for England in 1999.
Ordained a priest in 2002, she became the first female Bishop of London in 2018, only four years after the church began allowing women bishops after years of bitter factional wrangling.
Some churches around the Anglican world have long permitted women bishops, with the first appointed in the United States in 1989.
Others, however, remain opposed such as the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, Laurent Mbanda.
He has previously insisted the "majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy."
More than 40 of England's 108 bishops are now women, with a similar proportion among priests, after women clergy were first permitted in the early 1990s.
