…it had been widely anticipated that, once Dr Sentamu retired next June, England’s first black Archbishop might be replaced by England’s first woman Archbishop.
Not so. Stephen Cottrell, the person unveiled yesterday to step into Dr Sentamu’s shoes as the new Archbishop of York, is white, male (obviously) and middle aged (he’s 61).
A missed opportunity? A case of the Church of England bottling it once more on the issue of women in the highest offices?
Not necessarily. Because Bishop Cottrell is very far from being the kind of wealthy, public school-educated Establishment figure that filled the higher ranks of the church for so long.
In fact, he’s a Spurs-loving Essex boy who went to a secondary modern school and studied not at Oxford but at poly – the Polytechnic of Central London, in fact.
And while he undoubtedly comes from the ‘high church’ wing of the CofE (he is ‘Bishop Protector for the Society of St Francis’, an order of Anglican Franciscans very much at the ‘Catholic’ end of the CofE spectrum) he is also unashamedly liberal – and outspoken – on everything from homophobia to the church’s attitude to race.
PROFILE: Bishop Stephen Cottrell, the man named as next Archbishop of York https://t.co/FVKFPNbb9m pic.twitter.com/DKxmhTIRJh
— The Press – Features (@york_features) December 18, 2019