The Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, who serves as chairman of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) Primates Council, issued a scathing statement last August describing Vann’s election as “an act of apostasy” and “another painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy” that necessitates schism.

The first openly lesbian archbishop in Christian history recently said she finds it “very hurtful” that some people are leaving her church in protest of her gender and sexuality.

“There are still patches all over the place where people continue to struggle with women in leadership and I have to respect that,” the Most Rev. Cherry Vann, 67, who serves as bishop of Monmouth and was elected in July as the 15th archbishop of Wales, told the BBC last week.

“The Church in Wales is working hard to welcome LGBT+ people, but also I respect that there are people in the Church in Wales who find that really difficult,” she said. “Some, sadly, have felt the need to leave and I take that very seriously.”

Vann’s election last summer by an electoral college composed of clergy and lay members of the Church of Wales, which became an independent part of the Anglican Communion in 1920, caused an eruption within global Anglicanism.

The church body is also fracturing over King Charles III appointing Dame Sarah Mullally as the first female archbishop of Canterbury, who has also expressed support for homosexuality and will be formally installed in 2026.

Vann’s election despite her lesbianism led to criticism from conservative Anglican groups such as the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which broke ties with the Church of Wales shortly after she was appointed.

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