The Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney has told BBC Radio Shetland that she hopes her battles with her critics will come to an end and that she can “move forward” with her episcopal ministry.

On 7 April 2025 the Rt. Rev. Anne Dyer, who was suspended for bullying in 2022, but then returned to work last year after the Scottish Episcopal Church’s procurator held there was insufficient public interest to take her case to trial said: “I am visiting my priests, and people, and finding out how they are in their lives, but also wanting to hear from them about what they think God is doing in their churches.”

“The period of the process was extremely prolonged, it was stressful, for absolutely everybody that was involved in it, there was a time when I thought it was never going to come to an end, but thankfully it did. So from October we’ve been turning a corner and moving forward.”

Bishop Dyer said the reception of her return to work had been “very warm indeed” and that she was working on reconciling with those whom she offended. 

“When any relationship is strained you can’t just automatically snap back to how things were previously,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right to pretend nothing has gone on, and nothing has been said. So in all cases we are working hard at thinking about what does it mean to be reconciled, and how does professional mediation help us to address the things we need to speak about in order that we can move forward. Most of those conversations are confidential, but they are taking place, we are taking the healing very seriously indeed.”

Bishop Dyer said wanted members of the diocese to know she was committed to listening. “I hope that they would hear me as well, that I want to respect our differences, because some of this is about differences, about opinions, on what the church should be like, and how we go about things, that our differences need to be respected, and they have my full assurance that I would do that.”