A PETITION which calls for the Dean of York to lose her job over a service she gave at York Minster during last week’s Richard III commemorations has been described as “malicious”.

A group of supporters who had wanted a York burial for Richard III have launched a petition demanding the Very Rev Vivienne Faull stands down.

The dean gave a service at York Minster on the day Richard III was reinterred at Leicester.

But some members of the congregation walked out. They said it lacked enough spirit of reconciliation with those who had wanted a York reburial and failed to give enough commemoration to the king’s connections with York and Yorkshire - featuring too much on Leicester, where the dean had previously been based.

The petition, which has about 130 signatures, says it untenable to have a dean who they say promotes her previous cathedral at the Minster.

A spokesman for the Minster supported the Dean, condemning the petition as “malicious, offensive and misconceived”.

He said that, after the lengthy legal fight over King Richard’s bones, there is no basis for the claims he should have been buried in York.

The spokesman said: “The High Court ruled unanimously that the Ministry of Justice had acted correctly throughout the licence-issuing process, and that there was no legal justification for the court to overturn the reburial licence.

“There is absolutely no justification for this petition, and it is highly regrettable that the Dean of York has been subjected to these malicious, offensive and misconceived comments.”