Bishop Viv's biography

The Rt Revd Vivienne Faull is the 56th Bishop of Bristol. 

Born in 1955, Viv was brought up in a village on the Wirral, although she has close links to the Bristol area. Viv's mother was brought up in Bristol and her grandparents lived here all their lives.

She studied at The Queens School, Chester and Saint Hildas College, Oxford. After teaching with the Church Mission Society in North India and youth work at Shrewsbury House, Everton, she trained for ministry at Saint Johns College, Nottingham and Nottingham University.

Viv served as a Deaconess at Saint Matthew and Saint James, Mossley Hill in the Diocese of Liverpool from 1982 to 1985, moving to become Chaplain, later Fellow, of Clare College, Cambridge, being made Deacon in the Diocese of Ely in 1987.

She began cathedral ministry in 1990 as Chaplain at Gloucester Cathedral where she married her husband Michael, and where she was ordained priest in 1994. In 1994 she moved to become Canon Pastor, and later Vice Provost, at Coventry Cathedral.

Viv became the first woman to lead a Church of England Cathedral as Provost and then Dean of Leicester in 2000. In that role, she was incumbent of St Martin, Leicester, a city centre parish with significant diversity and areas of deprivation. In 2012, she was appointed Dean of York.

Until her move to York, Viv was a member of the General Synod representing Deans of cathedrals and was on the panel of Chairs of Synod.

In 2009 she was elected Chairman of the Association of English Cathedrals (the cathedrals' representative body) and is serving her second term on the English Anglican Roman Catholic committee for ecumenical conversations. She was the Chair of the Deans Conference and was elected as one of the female representatives in the House of Bishops in 2013.

Bishop Viv became a member of the House of Lords in October 2018.

In July 2021, she was appointed by archbishops as a new lead bishop for church and cathedral buildings, along with the Bishop of Ramsbury, Andrew Rumsey.

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