NEWLY-appointed Archbishop of Wales Cherry Vann has given her first public address as Primate.

Speaking in Newport to the Church in Wales’ governing body, Archbishop Vann – who is also Bishop of Monmouth – targeted transforming the CiW into a thriving institution, capable of demonstrating through action and attitude the “incomprehensible love of God to the world”.

The Anglican Communion News Service reported that she intends to “dedicate the next three years” to transforming CiW culture, saying: “This, I believe, is the most important thing we have to do together… we will never flourish as an institution and will never have the credibility to speak into the public square about God’s love or God’s creation unless we develop a culture, a way of behaving and being that reflects the nature of God as we see it in Jesus Christ.”

She said the three key areas were tending to their core purpose as God’s church, tending to their relationships with one another and tending to themselves and their own individual relationships with God.

Archbishop Vann, the first woman to lead the CiW and the first LGBTQ primate in Britain, reflected on Saint Paul’s words, adding: “The image that encapsulates this… is the body of Christ. He talks about a body with many parts, each part having its own unique job to do, and each needing the others in order for the body to be whole. In order for the body to work well and at its best, the parts need to work in harmony with each other.”

She said working as a chaplain to a deaf community had taught her what it felt like “not to fit in’ and called for proactive challenging of assumptions of minority groups, which can “get in the way of God’s love being shared”.

“Where people, communities and nations are becoming more divided and polarised, we are to seek and speak out for peace, reconciliation, community cohesion, recognising that all human beings are of equal worth.”