THE date for the installation of the next Archbishop of Canterbury has been announced.

The Rt Rev and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE will be enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on Wednesday, March 25.

Dame Sarah was Bishop of Crediton from 2015 to 2018, and the first female to hold the role.

She will also be the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, and the 106th person in the top Church of England position.

She succeeds Justin Welby, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 2013 until 2025 when he resigned amid an abuse scandal in the Church.

Dame Sarah, 63, has been Bishop of London since 2018. She will legally become the Archbishop of Canterbury at a confirmation of election ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday, January 28.

Her installation two months later will mark the symbolic start of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s public ministry in the Church of England and across the Anglican Communion.

“Rooted in centuries of tradition, the service will look forward with the hope of Jesus Christ – and celebrate the diversity of the Church of England, the nation and the Anglican Communion today,” said a Church of England spokesperson.

“Archbishop Sarah will be installed on the Cathedral Chair (Cathedra) as the Diocesan Bishop of the See of Canterbury, the oldest diocese in the English Church.

“Following this, she will be installed on the Chair of St Augustine (St Augustine Cathedra) as Primate of All England, which also symbolises her ministry in the Anglican Communion.”

The date chosen for her installation, March 25, is also the Feast of the Annunciation, which celebrates the day the angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus.

“As I respond to the call of Christ to this new ministry, I do so in the same spirit of service to God and to others that has motivated me since I first came to faith as a teenager,” Dame Sarah said when she was named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this month.

“At every stage of that journey, through my nursing career and Christian ministry, I have learned to listen deeply – to people and to God’s gentle prompting – to seek to bring people together to find hope and healing.

“I want, very simply, to encourage the Church to continue to grow in confidence in the Gospel, to speak of the love that we find in Jesus Christ and for it to shape our actions.

“And I look forward to sharing this journey of faith with the millions of people serving God and their communities in parishes all over the country and across the global Anglican Communion.

“I know this is a huge responsibility but I approach it with a sense of peace and trust in God to carry me as He always has.”

Dame Sarah was made the government’s chief nursing officer for England in 1999 and was a specialist cancer nurse.

She was ordained in 2002. She is married and has two children.