Cathedral Calls Woman As Dean
Episcopal News Service. December 18, 1986 [86275]
PHILADELPHIA (DPS, Dec. 18) -- The Rev. Geralyn Wolf, 39, was named Nov. 25 as dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, in the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky. She thus becomes the first woman in the Episcopal Church -- and probably the first in the Anglican Communion -- to be named a cathedral dean.
Wolf, vicar of St. Mary's Church here, succeeds Bishop Allen L. Bartlett, Jr., who was elected bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Pennsylvania in September, 1985, after 15 years as dean of Louisville.
Ordained in 1978, Wolf studied for the priesthood, she said, because she found Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., "resonated with who I was. You got to a place and find it was the missing piece, and you didn't even know you were looking for the piece."
In taking the Louisville appointment, Wolf leaves a small, 60-member mission which operates a soup kitchen that feeds 250 people every Saturday, for a 300-member cathedral. It was not until she was invited to Louisville that she realized she "wasn't a token," Wolf says. "I think it's a sign that a congregation was willing to call the person they thought was the best fit, and it happened to be a woman."
Asked whether the appointment might make her a candidate for bishop someday, she said it placed her "in a likely position for people to want to put my name in," but added she does not think the time is right for a woman bishop until the worldwide Anglican Communion discusses the issue.
Wolf, a native of New York City, earned her undergraduate degree from West Chester State College and a Master's degree from Trenton State College. She also studied at King's College, London and taught for four years before entering seminary. After her ordination in 1977, she was an intern at St. Mary's and then assistant at St. Martin's in Philadelphia for two years. She has been vicar of St. Mary's for five years.