Bruised by recent events, the Church of England has just entered a new era. Dame Sarah Mullally’s appointment as the first female archbishop of Canterbury is momentous. But Mullally has an enormous challenge ahead of her in healing the wounds that afflict her church. Restoring trust in the church’s senior leadership and preventing the church from fracturing over issues of sexuality and gender will be at the top of her agenda.Mullally’s appointment comes on the heels of a period of crisis in the church. The former archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was forced to resign following revelations about how he and other senior church leaders handled historic cases of child abuse.Mullally made clear that her first task will be to restore confidence in the church’s senior management and safeguarding processes: “As archbishop, my commitment will be to ensure that we continue to listen to survivors, care for the vulnerable, and foster a culture of safety and wellbeing for all.”As the first female archbishop of Canterbury, Mullally faces a unique set of challenges. A former chief nursing officer for England, Mullally was one of the first women to be made a senior bishop in a diocese when she was made bishop of London in 2018. While many in the Church of England have welcomed women priests and bishops, some – particularly on the traditionalist Evangelical and Catholic wings of the church – continue to oppose women’s ordination.Mullally’s role in guiding the global Anglican family is also complicated by the fact that many of its member churches do not accept women bishops and priests. Senior Anglican leaders from Africa and Asia have openly criticised her appointment, both because she is a woman and because of her views on same-sex marriage. Read more: First woman archbishop of Canterbury can't preside over communion in hundreds of churches Mullally will have to try and build bridges with those who oppose women priests and bishops – and who thereby deny her right to hold the office of archbishop – while assuring them that the church can still provide suitable provisions for them.Leadership cultureAlong with restoring trust in the church’s safeguarding processes, Mullally must also heal divisions within the church’s hierarchy over leadership culture. In the weeks leading up to Welby’s resignation, both he and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, were accused of using “coercive language” by the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley. According to Hartley, both archbishops showed a “complete lack of awareness of how power dynamics operate in the life of the church”. Mullally is now in a position to encourage reconciliation within the church’s hierarchy, and to lead it in a way that fosters mutual respect and accountability.Mullally must also encourage more people to join the priesthood, especially among the under-40s. Key here will be attracting new vocations not only to the parish system, but to “non-stipendary” forms of ministry – priests who hold down regular secular jobs while helping out in local churches. Mullally may have a unique advantage in this respect, given that she was a non-stipendary priest prior to resigning her post as chief nursing officer.While overall church attendance has declined in recent decades, the trend has reversed slightly in the last few years. In 2024, some 582,000 people regularly attended Sunday services, up from 574,000 in 2023. Mullally’s task will be to help foster this growth, while finding new ways of communicating to a radically changing society.Same-sex marriageCurrently, the Church of England does not conduct same-sex marriages, nor does it allow its clergy to enter them. In 2017, however, it launched Living in Love and Faith – a project to “listen, learn and respond to changing views” on gender, marriage, relationships and sexual identity.In light of this, the House of Bishops – one of the church’s main systems of government – voted in 2023 to allow the clergy to offer prayers of blessing for same-sex couples. Mullally was one of the bishops who voted for this move.Many in the church, including several bishops, are pushing for the church to go further and conduct same-sex marriages. A poll of clergy taken in 2023 by the Times revealed that 49.2% of Church of England clergy would be willing to conduct same-sex weddings. Others, though, oppose any change to the current doctrine, arguing that such a move would contradict both the Bible and tradition. As archbishop, how Mullally steers the church on this issue will be one of the defining characteristics of her tenure. But she herself cannot change church doctrine. Only the General Synod – the church’s chief governing body – has the power to do this. Adding an extra degree of complexity is that, as the new archbishop of Canterbury, Mullally is also the spiritual leader of the 85 million-strong global Anglican communion.Present in 165 countries, the Anglican communion consists of 42 member churches. Some of these, including the Scottish and Canadian Episcopal Churches, already permit same-sex marriage. Others, however, oppose it. Laurent Mbanda, the archbishop of Rwanda, said Mullally had “repeatedly promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality”.Should the Church of England – as the “mother church” of the Anglican communion –move towards same-sex marriage during Mullally’s time in office, it is possible that the already deeply divided Anglican communion could fracture irrevocably.William Crozier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.