The Right Reverend Christine Hardman to retire as Bishop of Newcastle

Bishop Christine Hardman said every human being deserved to live with dignity and the issue of poverty needed to be tackled

The Church of England's seventh woman bishop, who campaigned to highlight poverty, is to retire.

The Right Reverend Christine Hardman, who in 2015 became the Diocese of Newcastle's 12th bishop since 1882, will step down on 30 November.

The 70-year-old said great progress had been made in achieving equal rights for men and women in the church leadership.

However, Mrs Hardman said there was still a lot of work to do to make the church more diverse.

Mrs Hardman came out of retirement to become the Bishop of Newcastle

Mrs Hardman, who is married with two daughters and four grandchildren, said it had been her "pleasure" to serve the church.

"The church does feel like a different place now and it's not about women's rights, it's about men and women being equally represented in the leadership of the church," she said.

"Men and women equally are made in the image of God, so it just isn't about women in the church it's women everywhere.

"We still have much work to do in the church, for example working in diversity in terms of ethnicity.

"There's no place for us to sit back and be complacent."

She said that one of the highlights of her time as bishop was during one of the coldest nights of the year during severe storms in 2018, when Newcastle Cathedral opened its doors to the homeless.

She said: "That act of letting people who were out on the streets in had more effect in talking about the love of Jesus than any sermon."

Mrs Hardman was ordained as deacon in 1987 serving in the diocese of St Albans.

In 1996, she was appointed vicar of Holy Trinity and Christ the King, in Stevenage.

She was also rural dean of Stevenage in 1999 and in 2001 served as archdeacon of Lewisham and Greenwich in the Diocese of Southwark.

In 2012, she retired but went back to full-time ministry work when she was consecrated Bishop of Newcastle.

During her six years as a bishop she brought up the issues of poverty and homelessness in the House of Lords

Suffragan Bishop of Berwick, the Right Reverend Mark Wroe, will lead the Diocese of Newcastle through the process of appointing a successor.

Mrs Hardman added: "The heart of my faith is that every human being needs to have the possibility of leading their lives with dignity but the blight of poverty makes that impossible for many people especially children.

"By serendipity and tradition I ended up in the House of Lords and was determined to give a voice to those in poverty and the homeless and some of the areas in the North East which have been left behind."

During her six years as a bishop she brought up the issues of poverty and homelessness in the House of Lords