The Archbishop of Wales has said that some parishioners have left the Church in Wales because she is a gay woman. 

The Most Rev Cherry Vann became the first openly gay archbishop worldwide and the UK’s first female archbishop, having been elected in July. 

The Archbishop told BBC Wales that the hostility can be “very hurtful”, but she doesn’t want “people to feel shut down or silenced just because I hold a different view.”

She said: “We have to find a way as a church to respect one another's views and find a commonality in our faith in Christ, despite our differences.

“There are still patches all over the place where people continue to struggle with women in leadership and I have to respect that.

“The Church in Wales is working hard to welcome LGBT+ people, but also I respect that there are people in the Church in Wales who find that really difficult.

"Some, sadly, have felt the need to leave and I take that very seriously,” she told the BBC.

Speaking to Premier Christian News in August, Archbishop Cherry said she had lived with the knowledge that she was gay all her life and had “never heard God say to me, who you are is wrong. Who you love is wrong. You are living in sin. I have never heard that from God, and that's all I can say.”

The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), which represents conservative views, described her appointment as "another painful nail in the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy".