THE election of the new Archbishop of Wales, the Most Revd Cherry Vann, is “another painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy”, the Archbishop of Rwanda, Dr Laurent Mbanda, chair of the Gafcon Primates Council, has said.
In a statement issued on Friday, he said: “By celebrating this election and her immoral same-sex relationship, the Canterbury Communion has again bowed to worldly pressure that subverts God’s good word. . . We must confront serious error that compromises God’s glorious and authoritative word on human sexuality.”
A statement was also issued by the Anglican Convocation in Europe (ACiE), which is part of Gafcon and includes among its bishops the Revd Stuart Bell, consecrated in 2023 with primary responsibility for Wales, where he had been a cleric in Aberystwyth (News, 31 March 2023).
In response to Archbishop Vann’s appointment, Bishop Bell and Bishop Andy Lines (the head of ACiE) said that it had “come as a disappointment to many of the faithful followers of Jesus who remain in the Church in Wales. They had hoped and prayed for a leader of the Church who would at least be orthodox in Christian belief and lifestyle. . .
“We have no interest in commenting on or criticising Bishop Cherry as a person, by all accounts she is extremely competent. . . The issue is that Bishop Cherry, from her teaching and lifestyle, has shown consistently that she holds to a different understanding of the Christian faith from that held by faithful Anglicans down the ages.”
Both statements invited Anglicans in Wales to join the Gafcon movement.
Archbishop Vann has been in a civil partnership with Wendy Diamond since 2015 (News, 1 August), and they have been in a relationship for more than 30 years. She told a Pride service at St John’s, Cardiff, in 2021 that her appointment as Bishop of Monmouth in 2020 “would not have happened even a few years ago.
“Thanks to people down the years who have spoken out, who have challenged the institution and who have had the courage to be unashamedly who they are, the Church has changed and is changing as an increasing number of people come to see that love is love, faithfulness is faithfulness, whatever the myriad ways that is expressed.”
She told the Nation Cymru podcast in 2020 that she had hidden her sexuality “for a long, long time as a lot of gay clergy do, and as a lot of people sitting in the pews do. I hid it out of fear. It was a very fearful place to be, and it felt also quite disingenuous.
“I felt as though I was being forced to hide a substantial part of who I am for fear of being thrown out of the Church, for fear of ending up on the front page of a local newspaper, a fear of losing friends.”
Being “an out gay person with a partner” was “probably doing as much, if not more, than I would achieve if I were to be an open campaigner on the subject”, she said.
It was a sentiment repeated to The Guardian this week. “It happens that I’ve lived in a time that’s meant that I’m a trailblazer, but I’m not a campaigner,” she said. “I’m not somebody to be out there all the time but I do seek to be true to what I think God’s asking of me.”
In 2021, the Church in Wales Governing Body passed a Bill allowing same-sex couples to have their civil partnership or marriage blessed in church, for a trial five-year period. (News, 10 September 2021).
Archbishop Vann told The Guardian that she did not “personally feel the need to get married in church”. She said: “Gay marriage in church is inevitable, I think: the question is when. There are people who are very opposed, and as leader, I have to honour their position, which is theologically grounded. It isn’t my job to push something through that would alienate a good proportion of clergy.”
She told the BBC this week that she had “worked hard with those in my own diocese who have struggled with these characteristics of mine, and we have come to a really good understanding”.
As Archbishop, she faces in numerical decline. One mathematician has suggested that the Church in Wales — which reported 26,000 worshippers in 2018 — has an “extinction date” of 2038 (News, 27 May 2022). Between 2012 and 2022, the number of stipendiary clergy fell by 83 per cent.
On Monday, the Vicar of St Philip and St James, Whitton, in the diocese of London, the Revd Kate O’Sullivan, spoke warmly about her experience of Archbishop Vann during her time as a parish priest in the diocese of Monmouth, where she served in the Mid Torfaen and Tredegar Park ministry areas.
Archbishop Vann was “a genuinely kind and caring person”, she said. “I felt there was nothing I could not say to her, which is not the case with every bishop.” She had been impressed with Archbishop Vann’s leadership in Monmouth, in the wake of the inquiry carried out after the long absence and subsequent retirement of Bishop Richard Pain (News, 17/24 December 2021). Trust had been rebuilt, she said.
This was just one aspect of an inheritance in Monmouth which had not been an “easy route” into episcopal ministry, Mthr O’Sullivan suggested. Archdeacon Vann had also had to lead during the Covid-19 pandemic, the transition to Ministry Areas, and the death of the beloved Archdeacon of Monmouth, the Ven. Sue Pinnington.
The transition “wasn’t easy”, entailing the loss of structures that had been in place for hundreds of years, Mthr O’Sullivan said. But Archdeacon Vann had managed it “really well”, with pastoral care.
“I think that is the root of her ministry,” she said. “I never think of her as a career priest. Obviously, she has done extremely well, but first and foremost she is a deacon and a priest, over and above anything else.”
