Now former Bishop of Ripon is installed in new role at service
A SPECIAL service was held to celebrate the inauguration of the new Bishop of Newcastle.
The Rt Rev Dr Helen-Ann Hartley is the 13th Bishop of Newcastle, with clergy from across Newcastle Diocese, Church of England bishops, leaders from other faiths and civic and political leaders from the North East attending.
Former Olympic athlete and founder of the Great North Run Sir Brendan Foster, the Rt Rev Ingeborg Midttomme, Bishop of More, Norway, the Rt Rev Metlhayotlhe Beleme, Bishop of Botswana, and pupils from Archbishop Runcie Church of England First School also attended.
Bishop Helen-Ann, formerly Bishop of Ripon in the Diocese of Leeds, succeeds the Rt Rev Christine Hardman, who retired in October 2021.
Bishop Helen-Ann said: “I am very excited indeed that my inauguration service has finally arrived.
"Although it has felt like a long time waiting for it, I am very grateful for the opportunity this has given me to settle into our new home and begin the process of getting to know our wonderful Diocese of Newcastle.
“For the Church of England,
place and identity matter. We are ordered in such a way that we rejoice in being a Christian presence in every community and the Church does an awful lot that is good, much of which goes unseen.
"As I come into this new role as Bishop of Newcastle, I am coming home to a region I grew up in and which nurtured and encouraged my own faith in Jesus.
"Jesus taught his friends, the disciples, to notice things, to look out for the lost, last, and least, and above all to show the light and love of God, the God
who loves us unconditionally.” Bishop Helen-Ann was born in Edinburgh and spent her early years in the Scottish Borders, where her father was a Church of Scotland minister.
She moved with her family to Sunderland when her father became a CofE priest. She was ordained into the Church of England in 2005 as deacon in the Diocese of Oxford.
In 2010, she relocated to New Zealand where, in 2013, she was elected to become the Bishop of Waikato. In 2017, it was announced she was to become Bishop of Ripon.