The new Bishop of Stepney has been consecrated at St Paul’s Cathedral—and can’t wait to get started on his mission in London’s deprived East End.

The Rt Rev Adrian Newman was formally consecrated in a service led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the Bishop of London.

He is impatient to get going after his appointment in March, following six years as Dean of Rochester Cathedral in Kent.

“It’s quite a relief to finally get on with the job after all these months of waiting,” the new bishop admitted after Friday’s consecration.

“It’s a great privilege to be called to serve among the people of the East End.”

Bishop Adrian, now officially in post, begins his work with parishes across East London bringing considerable experience to the role, having begun his career as a Church of England curate at St Mark’s, Forest Gate, before working at parishes in The Midlands and Yorkshire.

But already he is lined up to make his mark, as key speaker at an anti-fascist rally being staged this coming Friday evening at the East London Mosque in Whitechapel. It has been called by an alliance of inter-faith organisations calling on the police to ban a planned Far Right march through Whitechapel by the English Defence League on September 3.

Bishop Adrian took a sabbatical in 2010 to research the role of the Church in Inner City areas. The father-of-three grown-up sons was economist before taking up the cloth in 1985. He succeeds the Rt Rev Stephen Oliver as Bishop of Stepney who retired last year.