Church in Wales

The Church in Wales (Welsh: Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru) is an Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses. The Archbishop of Wales does not have a fixed archiepiscopal see, but serves concurrently as one of the six diocesan bishops. The position is held by Cherry Vann, Bishop of Monmouth, since July 2025. Vann is the first woman to hold the post of Archbishop of Wales, and therefore the first to be an Anglican archbishop in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Unlike the Church of England, the Church in Wales is not an established church. Disestablishment took place in 1920 under the Welsh Church Act 1914 but the Church still bears some of the characteristics of a state church, especially in areas like marriage and burial grounds. As a province of the Anglican Communion, the Church in Wales recognises the Archbishop of Canterbury as a focus of unity, but without any formal authority. A cleric of the Church in Wales can be appointed to posts in the Church of England, including the See of Canterbury; a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was from Wales and served as Archbishop of Wales before his appointment to Canterbury. According to the World Christian Database, published in 2021, and Encyclopedia Britannica, there are an estimated 1.1 million people who were baptised as Anglicans in the Church in Wales.