A vicar who only started going to church as a teenager because he had a crush on his future wife is preparing to leave the city he has served for a new adventure.

The Right Reverend Andy Bowerman will fly to Australia the same day he gives his final service as Dean of Bradford.

Friends, parishioners and community leaders will join him at Bradford Cathedral, where he has worked and lived in the grounds since 2022.

He told the BBC how much he has enjoyed his time in the "very special" city where he was first ordained as a Church of England priest 24 years ago.

Bowerman has accepted a role in Melbourne as a dean at a group of Christian schools with 3,500 students and staff.

He said: "It was more the role. I keep telling people, I never had any sense that we'd go and live in Australia.

"But this just seemed like a really exciting opportunity to try and help pupils stay curious about faith and learn about faith.

"I'll take my last service and then in the evening we'll hop on a plane.

"We stop over in Dubai and will go and see our granddaughter. And then by the Wednesday, I'll be starting."

The 57-year-old was ordained in Bradford back in 2002 and spent eight years "learning to be a vicar", serving first as a curate at St Augustine's in Undercliffe.

During this time he also set up the not-for-profit Vicars Café Bistro in Saltaire and was the chaplain to Bradford City FC between 2004 and 2009.

He moved to parishes elsewhere in England and had a spell in Dubai in 2018, when he worked with the Mission to Seafarers charity before returning to Bradford.

Bowerman and his wife Ali have fostered 24 children across 15 years, and had four of their own after meeting as teenagers.

"I started to go to church when I was 17, and I have to confess it was mainly because I was very interested in a young lady who'd joined our school.

"The only way was to go along to her church youth group.

"Anyway it worked in lots of ways because I found faith, but I also ended up finding a wife."

They married in their early 20s, and worked with AIDS patients and refugees in Pakistan in the 1990s. The couple now have two grandchildren.

As part of the City of Culture celebrations, Bowerman was a member of the BBC Radio Leeds Bantam of the Opera choir, and met the King when they sang for the monarch during a royal visit in May.

He said: "It will be very difficult to say farewell to the very special community here at Bradford as well as to colleagues and friends in the wider district and diocese.

"We'll definitely be back for regular visits as our eldest daughter, and our grandson, still live in Bradford."

The Reverend Canon Jonathan Triffitt, who grew up in the city, has been appointed as interim Dean of Bradford for a period of three years.

(BBC NEWS)

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