LONDON (LifeSiteNews) — The formal confirmation of Sarah Mullally as the new Anglican archbishop of Canterbury was interrupted when a pastor publicly objected and was forcibly removed from the service.
On Wednesday, during the Confirmation of Election service for Sarah Mullally at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Anglican pastor Paul Williamson stood up and shouted his objection after the officiant declared that no opposition had been presented, leading to his restraint and removal from the cathedral by security personnel.
“I did!” Williamson shouted during the ceremony, after the proctor for the College of Canons of Canterbury Cathedral stated that “no person has appeared in opposition to the confirmation.”
BREAKING: Dame Sarah Mullally heckled during ceremony confirming her as the new Archbishop of Canterbury.https://t.co/cTkfL2rZLq
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The Confirmation of Election service is the canonical act by which the schismatic Church of England formally gives consent to the monarch’s choice of a bishop. The ceremony marked Mullally’s legal confirmation as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury and Anglican Primate of All England, following her appointment announced on October 3, 2025. She is the first woman to be appointed in this role.
Williamson, who became a pastor in 1973, has long been publicly opposed to the ordination of women in the Church of England. Witness accounts circulated after the service state that Williamson was restrained, handcuffed, and escorted out of the cathedral. Williamson himself later said that he was “nearly pushed down the stairs” by “four heavies” during his removal from the building.
After the incident, Williamson explained that his objection concerned not only Mullally’s eligibility for the office but also allegations which he said Mullally had falsely made against the late Alan Griffin.
Griffin died by suicide in August 2020, following what Williamson characterized as “a prolonged period of suffering, resulting from the false allegations of a sexual nature,” a claim repeated in a petition launched by Williamson calling for Mullally’s resignation.
Williamson is a representative of that segment of the Anglican clergy which has consistently rejected the validity of female “priests” and “bishops.” The schismatic Church of England has accepted female deacons since 1985, female priests since 1992, and female bishops since 2014.
However, Anglican orders are always invalid. In the apostolic letter Apostolicae Curae (1896), Pope Leo XIII declared “with certain knowledge, that the ordinations celebrated according to the Anglican rite have been and are entirely invalid and absolutely null.” This judgment is grounded in defects of form and intention introduced into the Edwardine Ordinal and consistently reaffirmed by the Catholic magisterium.
Mullally’s ministry has been publicly associated with progressive positions on women’s ordination, sexual ethics, and the affirmation of same-sex relationships—stances commonly described as “woke” and which have contributed to doctrinal controversy and division within the very same Anglican Communion.
“This is our habemus mamam moment,” the Anglican bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, told the congregation soon after the confirmation, clearly making a play on words about the Catholic papacy.
