The Vatican’s Feting of the First Female Archbishop of Canterbury
Rather than aiding Christian unity, Rome's exuberant welcome of Sarah Mullally is likely to be a stumbling block to reaching it.
The word “scandal” comes from the Greek skándalon, via the Latin scandalum, meaning a “stumbling block” — something that causes another to fall, especially in matters of faith and morals.
It was a term Pope Leo XIV returned to several times on Monday in his address to Sarah Mullally, the first female Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, during her four-day visit to Rome.
Disunity among Christians, he said, is one such stumbling block to proclaiming the Gospel. It would also be a scandal, he added, if Christians failed to continue working towards overcoming their divisions, however intractable they are.
All true. But there is another kind of scandal, arguably more serious in the quest for Christian unity: portraying something as true that is evidently not, and trumpeting it from the rooftops.
Mullally, like all her Anglican predecessors, does not possess valid orders. She leads a community separated from Rome that has drifted further from Catholic teaching, particularly over the past sixty years since the historic meeting of Paul VI and her predecessor Michael Ramsey. Her recent appointment as the first female archbishop of Canterbury only reinforces the judgment of Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae (1896), which declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void.”
Yet throughout her visit, Rome received Mullally — who has described herself in the past as “pro-choice rather than pro-life” and supports blessings for same-sex couples — with an enthusiasm that conveyed precisely the opposite impression. From the moment she arrived, Vatican officials rolled out the red carpet, extending courtesies that went well beyond diplomatic hospitality and included gestures laden with ecclesial significance.
Archbishop Flavio Pace, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, permitted Mullally to give a blessing in the Clementine Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica – the very site of St. Peter’s martyrdom and so a place where apostolic succession is visually and spiritually concentrated. It was the first time a visiting archbishop of Canterbury has been given such a privilege, and Archbishop Pace bowed to receive her blessing.
She was welcomed at the major Roman basilicas, granted a private audience with Pope Leo XIV, for which the Vatican was quick to distribute photographs, and led a public “moment of prayer” with the Pope in the Chapel of Urban VIII in the apostolic palace, joined by Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and Archbishop Richard Moth of Westminster.
Strikingly, she became the first archbishop of Canterbury to officiate an Anglican liturgy in the church of St Ignatius of Loyola in Campo Marzio, a prominent Jesuit church where Sts. Aloysius Gonzaga and Robert Bellarmine are buried. Although the Church of England has its own church in Rome — the Church of All Saints near Piazza del Popolo — she also formally installed her representative to the Holy See during the service. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle preached at the Anglican liturgy.
In his address to Sarah Mullally earlier on Monday, Pope Leo had recalled his own episcopal motto, In Illo uno unum — in Christ, we are one — and quoted Pope Francis who said it would “be a scandal if, due to our divisions, we did not fulfil our common vocation to make Christ known.”
But can there ever be authentic ecclesial unity with a communion that lacks valid orders and promotes moral teachings at odds with Catholic doctrine, including women’s ordination?
Moreover, what service is Rome rendering to Anglicans by publicly feting their first woman leader while omitting to charitably issue some kind of fraternal correction? Meetings, joint prayers (also in the Sistine Chapel last year with King Charles III, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England), blessings, and liturgical gestures — these all abound, but never is there any call to doctrinal conversion or repentance for the schism.
This contrasts with Vatican statements twenty years ago, when the Church of England was contemplating ordaining women as bishops. Cardinal Walter Kasper, then Cardinal Koch’s predecessor, treated the issue with the utmost seriousness. Not known for his orthodoxy, even he was emphatic that such a step would effectively rupture the shared understanding of apostolic tradition and render full communion “unreachable,” since the Catholic Church holds that the episcopate can only be conferred on men.
And yet, when the Church of England later ignored those warnings and approved the ordination of women as bishops, Rome expressed regret but continued dialogue without any evident shift in approach.
That response, absent of any meaningful fraternal correction, has continued, leaving a mood music that conveys major developments such as ordaining women as bishops as being of little consequence to Rome, or at least not decisive obstacles on the road to unity. The cumulative effect has been to elevate symbolic closeness above doctrinal clarity — an impression that has likely only encouraged the Church of England to continue along its present course.
By publicly treating Sarah Mullally as a valid archbishop — allowing her to lead prayers with the Pope, bless a real archbishop in the Clementine Chapel, and officiate Anglican vespers in a historic Roman Church — the Vatican is serving to affirm her in her ecclesial “trans” identity and error.
But if unity is to be real, it must be grounded in truth. Without that foundation, even the most gracious encounters risk becoming, in the end, the very stumbling blocks Pope Leo warns against, rather than steps toward communion.
Cardinal Koch was contacted for comment on Mullally’s visit but he had not responded by press time.
I quit my job as an Anglican priest while my wife was pregnant because we both decided that unity with the See of Peter was mandatory. It's insulting to see gestures like this that amount to “why bother becoming Catholic, Anglicanism is the same thing!”
The pictures of her blessing a real bishop who bows to her in the Clementine chapel travel around the world sending a message. Of course she should be shown courtesy as an invited guest to the Vatican but this was over the top. When it comes to immigration issues and war though there seems to be no lack of strong rebuke and condemnation.