The Very Reverend Viv Faull the Dean of York Minster is to take up an appointment as the Bishop of Bristol.

Viv Faull has made a major contribution to the  regeneration of the Minster during the last 6 years. Financially the Cathedral is more secure, major projects like the restoration of the Great East Window have been completed and congregation numbers have increased.

She was the first woman Dean in York’s history and will become one of only a few female Bishops in the country.

We wish her well in her new role.

The Press release from 10 Downing Street is reproduced below.

BISHOP OF BRISTOL

The Queen has approved the nomination of the Very Reverend Vivienne Frances Faull, MA, Dean of York, in the diocese of York, for election as Bishop of Bristol in succession to the Right Reverend Michael Arthur Hill, on his resignation on the 30th September 2017.       

 Background  

The Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, (aged 62) studied at the Queen’s School, Chester and Saint Hilda’s College, Oxford. After teaching with the Church Mission Society in North India and youth work at Shrewsbury House, Everton, she trained for ministry in Nottingham. She then moved to the Liverpool diocese serving as a Deaconess from 1982 to 1985. She was Chaplain, Fellow and honorary Fellow at Clare College Cambridge and was made Deacon in the Diocese of Ely in 1987. She began cathedral ministry in 1990 as Chaplain at Gloucester Cathedral where she was ordained in 1994. She became Canon Pastor, and later Vice Provost at Coventry Cathedral in 1994. In 2000, she became the first woman to lead a Church of England cathedral when she was appointed Provost of Leicester becoming Dean of Leicester later that year.

She was appointed to her current post as Dean of York in 2012, overseeing the completion of a complex £20 million Heritage Lottery Fund project to restore York Minster’s Great East Window. Her interest in the sustainable regeneration of communities led to her nomination as chair of the City of York Council’s community forum for the York Central project – the largest brown field mixed development site in the north of England.  

She was chair of the Association of English Cathedrals (the cathedrals’ representative body) from 2009 to 2015 and is currently chair of the Deans’ conference. She is Vice Chair of the Archbishops’ Council Cathedrals Working Group which has reviewed the governance and finance of English Anglican cathedrals. She is a governor of York St John University and holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Chester, Gloucester and York.

Vivienne is married to Michael, a consultant physician. Together they have walked a third of the ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome and travelled to Canada to canoe the Turner Lakes and explore the Haida Gwaii islands by sailing boat.