Statement on Archbishop and Pope

June 2026

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (CONTINUING) WEBSITE STATEMENT JUNE 2026

BOTH A FEMALE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AND THE PAPACY HAVE NO SCRIPTURAL WARRANT

By Rev P Lievesley

On the 27th of April 2026, an unprecedented event occurred when the Most Reverend Dame Sarah Mullally, the first female Archbishop of Canterbury met and prayed with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. It was unprecedented because there is no Scriptural warrant for either a female Archbishop of Canterbury (1 Timothy 2:12-14; 1 Timothy 3:17; Titus 1:5-9; 1 Corinthians 14:33-35) or for the papacy (Matthew 23:9; Luke 22:25-26; 1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 2:20, 5:23; Galatians 2:11-14; 1 Peter 5:1).

This official visit was the latest in a series of fraternal visits between Archbishops of Canterbury and Popes since 1966 and highlighted ongoing false ecumenical dialogue with Popery. The first visit of an Archbishop of Canterbury to a reigning Pope since the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation occurred in 1960 when Geoffrey Fisher visited John XXIII. Beginning in 1966, a series of official visits has occurred, in most cases by the Archbishop visiting the Pope, although in 1982 and 2010 the Pope visited Britain. A month earlier on the 26th March 2026, the day after her enthronement when she wore the pastoral ring given to Archbishop Ramsey in Rome by Pope Paul VI in 1966, Archbishop Mullally and the Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, a major administrative department of the Roman Curia, prayed together at a special service in the Chapel of Our Lady Martyrdom at Canterbury Cathedral marking the 60th anniversary of Common Declaration by Archbishop Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI on the 23rd of March 1966.

At this initial stage in her tenure as the new female Archbishop, it seems that in addition to her departure from the traditional-historic interpretation of holy Scripture that plainly prohibits women from the ordained Christian Ministry, her actions appear inconsistent with the doctrine of the XXXIX Articles, the official teaching of the Church of England. It seems that she is happy to continue the Church of England’s departure from holy Scripture, and the official Protestant, Reformed, Biblical Anglican formularies towards a rapprochement with the apostate Church of Rome.

The unity for which our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ prayed in his great high priestly prayer in John 17:17 is a unity in truth. ‘Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth’. Therefore, a correct understanding of the Holy Bible brings unity to believers which is based on God’s Truth.

Five hundred years after the Protestant Reformation, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as revealed to us in holy Scripture has not changed. Jude v 3 reveals to us that the true church is ‘to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”. The phrase “once delivered” emphasises that the essential content of the Christian faith is not subject to change. But the Church of Rome has not only never recanted her false and unscriptural doctrines or repealed the decrees of the Council of Trent but has changed for the worse since the Protestant Reformation. All the decrees on Mariolatry and the De Fide proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope have come since the Protestant Reformation. The recent Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms all the essential issues of the sixteenth century debate including the treasury of merit, purgatory, indulgences, justification through the sacraments. It is furthermore plain to all Bible-believing Christians that, through its distortion of the Christian faith, there is no gospel in the Church of Rome to save souls. Rather Rome has historically only deceived, persecuted and harmed the true church of Christ. Any who are saved within Roman Catholicism are saved despite its errors, through faith in Christ alone, with documented accounts of Roman Catholic priests who have left the Church of Rome and embraced evangelical, biblical Christianity. We affirm the view held by our Protestant forefathers such as Archbishop Cranmer, that the Papacy is the Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4,7-8). This is surely no basis for any unity between the Church of England and the Church of Rome since 1966. We call upon the true church to ‘earnestly contend for the faith’.