Standing up last month in Britain’s House of Lords to oppose legislation that would allow medically assisted dying for terminally ill patients, Sarah Mullally, the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury, spoke from personal experience. As a onetime nurse, she said, she “had the privilege to be with many people as they die.”

That speech, little noticed at the time, may offer a glimpse into how Archbishop-designate Mullally, 63, plans to shape one of the world’s oldest and most complicated religious offices. With her appointment as the 106th archbishop, the first woman to hold the post, she becomes not only the highest-ranking cleric in the Church of England, but also the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide.

At heart, however, experts on the church predicted that she would be a pastoral leader, focused on the caring and tending of her flock.

“Washing feet has shaped my Christian vocation as a nurse, then a priest, then a bishop,” Archbishop-designate Mullally said in Canterbury Cathedral on Friday, moments after her appointment was announced.

“In the apparent chaos which surrounds us, in the midst of such profound global uncertainty,” she said, her soft voice almost lost in the vast, echoing nave, “the possibility of healing lies in acts of kindness and love.”