The new Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has used his enthronement speech to call for change in the Church of England. 

It follows the release of a damning independent report into the Church's failure to protect children from sexual predators in its midst. 

The Archbishop said the Church should be a place of safety for all. 

"The Church of England has not always been the safe place it should have been," he said.

"We need to change, and that change needs to be much more than mere words.

"I am determined to be someone who will lead on this change and I hold before me the words of this unknown young woman who came to the church with her fears and horrors and found a place of safety.

"I want that to be true for every church." 

Cottrell was enthroned in a socially distanced ceremony at York Minster on Sunday.  He succeeds Dr John Sentamu, who was Archbishop of York for 15 years before retiring in June. 

Elsewhere in his address, Cottrell said the Church must "confront division and oppression in society", including homophobia, racism, modern day slavery, poverty and "the unchecked tyranny of unaccountable power". 

"This is our vocation. And it's my job as Bishop and Archbishop to serve and lead the church in the very particular challenges of our own day where our world cries out for ways of inhabiting life which draws us together rather than tear us apart and is able to confront with joyful confidence the horrors that surround us: not just this terrible Covid pandemic, but death itself, and the more dangerous scourges of racism which deny our common humanity; and the environmental challenge where we are at risk of separating ourselves from the planet itself, so obsessed have we become with the dangerous suppositions of our own importance and dominion," he said. 

He added later that the "greatest revolution" in the Church of England would be "letting go of so much of our pomposity, privilege, position and power we became a simpler, humbler church; but also bolder in saying that our job is to love one another, and to show the world what loving one another looks like".