AS I was sitting in Wimborne Minster last Thursday to witness the installation of the new female rector – the first woman to be given the job – I knew I would like the Rev Vanessa Herrick.

Just observing her smile as she answered questions, speaking with a fresh innocent voice to the congregation, her warmth and generosity came across in abundance.

And when Vanessa invited me to The Rectory to meet her, just three weeks after moving to Wimborne, my initial feelings were confirmed.

“This is a different role to that I had previously,” she told me. “But I am looking forward to having a congregation, being there for them and for the wider community. I hope that together we will influence those outside the Church.”

Although this is Vanessa’s first parish of her own, she’s well equipped to serve the people of Wimborne, both from experience in her personal life and since her ordination as a deacon in 1996.

She’s been a clergyman’s wife to David, mum to Adam, 27, and Peter, 25, a music teacher, co-ordinator for the Foundation of the Study of Infant Death and chaplain of Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge before moving to the Diocese of Ely, where she was director of ministry and vocation for eight years before coming to Dorset.

Women priests were first ordained by the Church of England just two years before she was ordained as a deacon, so I was keen to know how Vanessa’s male colleagues had been towards her.

“I love working with men,” she said. “The vast majority have been good, and even those who theologically find it difficult have been supportive. I’ve had the odd occasion where people have walked out when I’ve walked in and that hurts, but I respect their views.”

But does being a woman actually help in her vocation?

“For me it does,” Vanessa says. “I can relate to people whether I am doing a funeral visit or if I meet them on the street. But I don’t think that’s because I’m a woman, it’s because of the person I am. I do think though that there will be some who might be able to relate better to a woman.”

When Vanessa worked with the charity supporting families of cot death there was a pastoral element to that, but she was also training others.

“I guess there are two sides to me, two threads that go through my ministry,” she explains. “The training of others to care, and then there’s the pastoral side of me.”

I wondered if Vanessa had any personal experience of cot death, but at the time she was employed by the charity she was the only co-ordinator not to have – testimony indeed to the fact she has a natural empathy for others.

The issue of women bishops is on everyone’s lips, so I cheekily asked if she would like to be one.

“I don’t think anyone should like to be a woman bishop,” she replied. “But if they are called? Well, it’s a question of vocation.

“There should be women bishops. The House of Bishops needs women. What other organisation these days would run with just men? I’d like to see the day when women are seen as ‘normal’ in the church.”

Vanessa says she has three key words she hopes will describe the Minster.

“I hope it will be a place of hospitality, generosity and inclusiveness,” she concludes.