John Sentamu's Biography

Sentamu was born in 1949, the sixth of thirteen children in a village near Kampala, Uganda.

He was educated by English missionaries.

Sentamu was a judge in the High Court in Uganda where he incurred the disapproval of Idi Amin.

On Easter 2007, John Sentamu drew on his experiences in Uganda when writing in The Telegraph, Easter is about life. That's why we make so much noise.

John Sentamu married Margaret in 1973 and they came to the UK in 1974. Initially Sentamu trained for the priesthood at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He was ordained in 1979 and served as assistant chaplain at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Sentamu was made Bishop of Stepney in 1996 and Bishop of Birmingham in 2002.

He has worked on inquiries into the killings of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor.

In August 2006 Dr John Sentamu undertook a week long fast allowing himself only water. He shave his head and slept in a tent in York Minster. It was in response to the war in the Lebanon and the Archbishop was encouraging others to give something up and help the charities working in the region.

In September 2008, John Sentamu said of the financial crisis:

"We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland ... To a bystander like me, those who made £190m deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of a very strong capital base, and drove it into the arms of Lloyds TSB, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers."

In 2019 he ordained his wife as a deacon in York Minster.