John Sentamu

John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu was born on 10 June 1949 in Kampala, Uganda, one of thirteen children. He trained and practised as a barrister and judge in Uganda under the government of Milton Obote before Idi Amin's brutal regime seized power in 1971; Sentamu's outspoken criticism of the regime's human rights abuses led to his arrest and detention, and he fled to England in 1974 after Amin's forces killed the Chief Justice of Uganda, a stark warning of the danger Sentamu himself faced.

Sentamu retrained for the Anglican priesthood at Cambridge University, and was ordained in 1979, beginning a ministry career in England that combined pastoral work with sustained public engagement on issues of racial justice and social equity, drawing directly on his own experience of political persecution and displacement.

Sentamu gained significant national prominence in 1999 when he served as an advisor to the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black British teenager killed in a racially motivated attack whose case had exposed serious institutional failures in the Metropolitan Police's investigation; Sentamu's involvement in the inquiry, which concluded the police force was 'institutionally racist,' established him as a significant voice on British racial justice issues within mainstream public institutions.

Sentamu became Bishop of Stepney in 1996 and Bishop of Birmingham in 2002, before his appointment as Archbishop of York in 2005, making him the second most senior clergyman in the Church of England and the first Black archbishop in the church's history, a landmark appointment given the Church of England's historical position as an overwhelmingly white institution closely tied to English national identity.

As Archbishop of York, Sentamu became known for direct, sometimes provocative public advocacy, including publicly cutting up his clerical collar on television in 2007 in protest against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's human rights abuses, vowing not to wear a clerical collar again until Mugabe left office, a dramatic gesture that drew significant international attention to the situation in Zimbabwe.

Sentamu retired as Archbishop of York in 2020 after serving for 15 years, and has continued public service in the House of Lords and various advisory roles since. He remains a significant figure in British religious and civic life, remembered both for breaking a significant institutional barrier as the first Black archbishop in the Church of England's history and for his sustained willingness to use his position for direct public advocacy on human rights and racial justice issues throughout his tenure.