What is it really like to be a female bishop?

Her official title is The Most Reverend Patricia Storey. Some refer to her as Your Grace, others My Lord. She prefers to be known simply as Pat.

It’s perhaps this down to earth, unfussy attitude which has endeared the Church of Ireland’s first female bishop to her parishioners, although she’s game enough to admit not everyone has been entirely supportive.

Remembering back to her days as a parish priest, when she arrived to take up a post Ballymena, one man made his feelings very clear about the presence of a woman at the altar.

“He very firmly said, ‘I won’t be back until she’s gone’. And you know what, he was true to his word. I never saw him in church again.”

Quite what he made of the Church’s decision to make the former Ballymena minister Ireland’s first female bishop one can only guess, but it’s doubtful he had anything favourable to say. The issue has long been a contentious one, but with the Church of England having finally voted in favour of allowing women into its higher echelons, those same murmurings of discontent are beginning to rumble on this side of the Irish Sea.

“You know, I think Justin Welby has got it right,” she says, referring to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s long campaign to ensure a yes vote. “If you have a disagreement with someone in your family, you generally don’t chuck them out or make life difficult for them. No, you agree to differ and move on.

“There are still people here who are against women priests, some for quite complicated theological reasons. I understand that, they are entitled to their view and when we have to work together we do.

“We accept there are some things on which we disagree, but there is enough common ground for it not to blight the entire relationship.”

Unlike in England, when Ireland voted in favour of women priests in 1990 the Church also said it would allow women bishops. However, the cogs of the ecclesiastical world turn slowly and it was only last November, just short of a quarter of a century since the yes vote, that Pat found herself making history.

It’s now seven months since she took up the post and while she’s reluctant to offer any advice to England’s first wave of female bishops – there is, she says still too much to learn – it is , she says, a good move for the Church as a whole

“I’m delighted for the Church of England. It has been a long time coming, but now is not a time to look back, it’s a time to look forward. I’m still very much on a learning curve. As soon as I became bishop people wanted to know whether I had a grand plan, they kept asking me to set out my vision, but I was very clear that I would take a year to listen to people and to find out how this level of the Church works before committing to anything.”

Pat also admits that she wasn’t the most likely candidates to have landed one of the Church’s top jobs. In fact, when the call came, she was a rector in Londonderry and had barely given promotion a second thought.

“I was a very happy parish minister and I wasn’t particularly looking to climb through the ranks,” she says. “So when I was approached to be the Bishop of Meath and Kildare I was shocked and I know there were others who thought it was quite a left field appointment. It was quite overwhelming, so much so that I asked for 24 hours’ thinking time. I don’t think that is generally done, but I wanted to be confident that I could do the job and it was right not just for me, but the rest of the family.”

Her husband Earl had previously been a minister, but now runs his own PR company. Many of his clients are churches in Northern Ireland and a move south would inevitably have an effect on his business.

“I didn’t get much sleep that night and went for a long walk with Earl,” says Pat. “He felt immediately that I should take it, but for me it was more of a leap of faith. I said yes because I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no, but it was about three or four days after saying yes that I really began to feel at peace with the decision.”

While she says that she tried not think about the historical implications, for someone who had left school dreaming of being an air hostess, it was a heart in the mouth moment.

Her parents had been “nominally Presbyterian”, but growing up the Church wasn’t a huge presence in her life. In fact, it was only when she went to study English and French at Trinity College, Dublin, the she found her calling, and even then it was quite by accident.

Another girl from her home town of Killinchy was in the same year and in an effort to be friendly she went with her to a meeting of the Christian Union.

“It was at university, that I really discovered the Church and my own faith,” she says. “I knew God had to be part of my life, but back then, the idea of women becoming ministers wasn’t even on the agenda, so I didn’t even think about it.”

Instead she married Earl and the couple settled in Dublin and started a family. In between looking after their two children – Carolyn and Luke – Pat spent much of her time working in youth ministry. However, four years after the crucial vote, she took the first step to becoming a minister.

Following a three-year theology course, she was ordained a deacon and within 12 months had been made a priest. To come from minister’s wife to bishop in less than a decade is some going and there was extra media interest given the post had been due to be taken by the Venerable Leslie Stevenson before he resigned following allegations surrounding his private life.

“Of course it was a big deal and a lot of women before me had fought for equality within the Church, but really I think it’s important that priests and bishops are judged on whether they are doing a good job, not on their gender.

“Do I think of myself as a trailblazer? Honestly? No. I don’t. I know that it is an important landmark for the Church, but on day to day basis, I’m just a bishop like any other doing my job.

“It is a wonderful privilege to be a bishop, but I think I’m enjoying myself much more than I thought I ever would.”

There’s clearly an element of relief that she made the right decision, but the Church of Ireland and England does have to grapple with some difficult issues, with discussions over same sex marriage likely to be even more divisive than the debate over women bishops.

“Certainly that’s high on the agenda, but the bigger issue, I think, is the gradual secularisation of our society, particularly our schools. The Church has to find ways of being relevant.”

If a link to ordinary people is what the Church needs, it may need to find more bishops like Pat Storey.

“I am just an ordinary wife and mother. I try to get one clear day off each week. I like to walk the dog, go out for dinner with friends. Everyone needs time for themselves. Not even God worked seven days a week.”