A sharp, faithful, and fearless reckoning — history, theology, and the current rupture of a communion
On October 3, 2025 the Church of England named Dame Sarah Mullally — formerly Bishop of London and a one-time Chief Nursing Officer for the NHS — as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury: the first woman ever chosen to sit in an office that reaches back to Augustine of Canterbury in 597. The announcement is historic, symbolic and combustible: a milestone for women’s ministry in Anglicanism, and a flashpoint for the deep theological and geographical divides that still cleave the Communion.
To understand why a single appointment can feel like a seismic event you must pull three threads together: (1) the ancient and fragile moral authority of Canterbury as “primus inter pares” of Anglican primates; (2) the Roman judgement of 1896 — _Apostolicae Curae_— which declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void”; and (3) the century-long, fitful ecumenical choreography — replies, dialogues, pastoral solutions — that followed. Taken together these explain why Canterbury’s new occupant is not merely a national leader but a sign that will be read in Rome, Lagos, Canterbury, Canterbury’s cathedrals, and parish halls across the globe.
Leo XIII’s _Apostolicae Curae: what was declared and why it still matters
Pope Leo XIII’s apostolic letter of 13 September 1896 — _Apostolicae Curae_ — reached a blunt juridical conclusion: Anglican ordinations (that is, the episcopal, priestly and diaconal ordinations conducted according to the post-Reformation English rites) are invalid. The judgement rested on two pillars: extrinsic and intrinsic grounds. Extrinsically, Rome pointed to the longstanding practice of receiving former Anglican clergy into the Catholic priesthood by conditional or unconditional re-ordination — a historical practice Rome read as tacit recognition that Anglican orders were not effective.
Intrinsically, Leo XIII argued that the Edwardine ordinal (the mid-16th century rites shaped by Cranmer and the Reformation) lacked the proper form and intention: the words and rites no longer expressed a clear intention to ordain to a sacrificial priesthood understood as in the Catholic tradition, and the rite’s formulation truncated the theology of priesthood that, by the Church’s own sacramental logic, must be signified by the sacramental form. The text is detailed, technical and, in its claims about “form” and “intention,” remains the hinge of the entire discussion.
Canterbury’s rejoinder — Saepius Officio — and the tangled historiography
The archbishops of Canterbury and York answered in 1897 with ¬_ Saepius Officio_— a learned, painstaking rebuttal that marshalled liturgical parallels, historical documentation (not least the contested accounts of Matthew Parker’s consecration) and arguments that similar rhetorical lacunae in Eastern and even some Roman rites did not lead to Catholic determinations of nullity. Anglicans said, in effect: either Leo XIII has applied a double standard, or his historical premises — about altered rites, intent and an unbroken scholarly case for invalidity — are contestable. The exchange that followed (Catholic replies, Anglican rejoinders, newspaper polemics) entrenched positions rather than resolving them.
The 20th-century detente and the modern paradox of mutual recognition
For much of the 20th century ecumenical conversations tried to move the debate beyond binary verdicts. The Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) worked expressly on issues of ministry and ordination and produced shared statements (for example, Ministry and Ordination) that sought common theological language about apostolicity, episcopacy, and the Eucharist — without, however, overturning legal judgements like _Apostolicae Curae_. In parallel, structures like the papal provision for personal ordinariates (Benedict XVI’s _Anglicanorum Coetibus_, 2009) offered a pastoral route for corporate groups and clergy to enter full communion with Rome while preserving elements of their Anglican patrimony; that pastoral path presupposes, paradoxically, that Anglican orders remain, from Rome’s canonical standpoint, not simply a matter of local liturgical reform but of sacramental identity.
Rome’s continuing stance — doctrinal weight and pastoral reality
It is important to be frank: the Roman position was not quietly rescinded. The 1998 motu proprio _Ad tuendam fidem_ and its doctrinal commentary treated certain “dogmatic facts” (matters connected with revelation by historical necessity) as requiring definitive assent; Leo XIII’s judgment on Anglican ordinations was cited among such juridical-historical conclusions. In pastoral life, the result is mixed: Rome has created ordinariates and welcomed individuals and communities; but the canonical judgment on the validity of Anglican orders has been treated as doctrinally established in ways that still limit full, mutual recognition of ministries. That tension — juridical fact vs. pastoral elasticity — is the practical heart of the modern Anglican-Roman Catholic encounter.
Why Sarah Mullally’s appointment ripples beyond England
Dame Sarah Mullally’s elevation thrusts two long arcs into collision. First, within Anglicanism she embodies the reality that the Church of England has progressively authorised women’s ordained ministry (first priests in 1994, first female bishops in 2015) — and now, the occupant of the Canterbury throne is female. Across the global Communion, that reality is contested: parts of the Communion (notably some African provinces and conservative global networks) will be unable to accept a female “first among equals” and may respond by distancing themselves from Canterbury’s moral authority.
Second, for Catholic–Anglican relations the appointment dramatises the real discontinuities of theology and ecclesiology that documents such as Apostolicae Curae saw as essential: if a primate’s very person (and the theology behind admitting women to episcopacy) is rejected by Rome as incompatible with sacramental priesthood, how do two communions navigate common witness, sacramental sharing, and pastoral cooperation? In short: this is not merely a story of internal reform; it is a renewed test of ecumenical imagination.
• Rev. Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Uromi and a Lecturer at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
