Kay Goldsworthy says every Anglican, from clergy to parishioners, would have to examine their own beliefs on marriage equality

The newly appointed Anglican archbishop of Perth says she has an “inclusive” approach to marriage equality but will not challenge the stated position of the church.

Kay Goldsworthy was among the first group of women ordained to the Anglican priesthood in Australia in 1992, became the first female bishop in 2008, and this week became the first woman elected to the position of archbishop.

The appointment was announced on Tuesday and she will officially take up the role on 10 February 2018.

She told Guardian Australia she knew what it was like to be at the centre of a debate about the traditions of the church and said that experience could make people “a little more open” to others trapped by those same traditions.

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But she said everyone within the church, from clergy to parishioners, would have to examine their own beliefs and come to their own conclusions.

“The Anglican church’s position is that in Australia marriage is between a man and a woman,” she said. “One man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, for life.

“The more personal kind of position that I might have around these matters is one that is open to a more inclusive position, but that’s not the whole church.”

Anglican leaders have been divided in their support for both a plebiscite and the concept of marriage equality.

The Sydney archdiocese is one of 80 organisations that formed the Coalition for Marriage, the main plank of the ‘no’ campaign, but the head of the Anglican church in Australia, Melbourne archbishop Philip Freier, said last year the church “must accept” the result of the vote.

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Goldsworthy said the issue of women joining the clergy was very different to the debate around marriage equality, but equally challenging.

“If you have been in one part of these debates perhaps you will be a little more open to others, although that’s not the case for everybody,” she said.

“It’s not an easy place for us as a church.”

Her progressive stance on marriage equality could reignite tensions with conservative wings of the church, the same quarters that opposed the decision to allow Goldsworthy and other women to become bishops.

Both the archdiocese of Sydney and the diocese of north west Australia opposed the introduction of female bishops.

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Goldsworthy spent 22 years with the church in Perth before being appointed bishop of Gippsland, based in Sale in Victoria’s south-east, in 2014. She was ordained as bishop by her predecessor, Roger Herft, who retired early from his post as archbishop of Perth in December last year after admitting to a hearing of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse that he had failed child sex abuse victims.

Hereft told the commission he was “deeply fooled” by alleged paedophile priest Peter Rushton and failed the victim of another alleged offender “miserably” by allowing the suspect priest to be legally represented by the diocese deputy chancellor and failing to provide pastoral care.

Goldsworthy said the church had to work to regain the trust of people disillusioned by its past failures, but that Perth had strong processes in place to ensure transparency.

“All of this needs to be very clear and there needs to be a process so that people understand that the church can be a very safe and welcoming place for the small and vulnerable,” she said. “For most of us that is what the church has always been, but that does not take away from what it has not been to others.”