I am delighted to announce our Holy Week preacher for 2022. The recently retired Archbishop of York, The Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. John Sentamu.
Bishop Sentamu was born in Uganda where he studied law and became an advocate of the Supreme Court. He spoke out against the dictatorship of Idi Amin and was imprisoned before escaping to the United Kingdom. He continued his studies at Cambridge from where he received his doctorate. He was ordained in 1979 and has been an Area Bishop in the Diocese of London, Bishop of Birmingham, and was translated to York in 2005.
He was the first black bishop of the Church of England and has been passionate in his pastoral and teaching ministry. He is deeply loved by the people of Yorkshire and he was named ‘Yorkshireman of the Year’ in 2007 and a High School has been named after him.
Archbishop Sentamu has been outspoken for the poor and the marginalized, and against slavery, food insecurity, injustice, and war. He famously cut up his clerical collar on television as a protest against President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Bishop Sentamu is now a Life Peer in the House of Lords and has a rather wonderful formal title: Baron Sentamu, of Lindisfarne in the County of Northumberland and of Masooli in the Republic of Uganda. I am so much looking forward to welcoming him and his wife to the Rectory next year, and I know that many of you will enjoy meeting with him.
