Justin Welby Resigns as Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has resigned following the storm surrounding his mishandling of a child sex abuse scandal.

In a statement, Welby said that it had become clear that he “must take personal and institutional responsibility” for the “long and retraumatising” period after he was informed of serious allegations in 2013.

The pressure on the Archbishop to resign reached a new intensity in the past 48 hours as senior colleagues joined in the calls for him to step down.

The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr. Helen-Ann Hartley, yesterday called the Archbishop’s position “untenable” and said urgent action was needed to prevent the Church of England “losing complete credibility”. This morning the Dean of Chapel at King’s College Cambridge, Dr. Stephen Cherry, told BBC Radio 4’s Today that Welby had lost the “trust and confidence” of the Church of England.

A number of other senior bishops were reported to have privately said that his position was untenable.

Since Saturday, more than 12,000 people had signed a petition created by General Synod clergy members Rev Dr. Ian Paul, Rev Robert Thompson and Rev Marcus Walker, demanding Welby resign “for the protection of the vulnerable, and for the good of the Church”.

Calls for Welby to quit were also trending on X over the weekend with the hashtag #welbyresign. Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie, author of Touching Cloth, wrote an open letter urging Welby to go “for the love of God, and Him alone” that was viewed over 400,000 times.

This morning, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband piled the pressure on as they failed to back him, with Starmer saying the victims have “obviously been failed very, very badly”.

The abuser at the heart of the scandal is John Smyth QC, a barrister and Christian summer camp leader who is said to have subjected as many as 130 victims to sexual violence before he died in Cape Town in 2018 while under investigation by Hampshire police.

Details of the abuse were known as early as 1982 but only emerged in the public domain in 2017 thanks to investigations by the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4. According to the Telegraph:

Victims said Smyth would invite them to his home in Winchester where he would order them to strip naked and cane them on their exposed backsides. One said he could feel the blood spattering on his legs; another had to wear an adult nappy afterwards.

The scandal exploded this week due to the publication of an independent report, the Makin report, several years overdue, which found that Smyth’s crimes could have been exposed in 2013 if Welby, who had become aware of the allegations that year, had followed up to ensure the police investigated. His failure to do so meant Smyth was never brought to justice, the report said.

Andrew Morse, 63, who was violently abused by Smyth when a teenager in the 1970s, said Welby’s failure to act in 2013 was a “dereliction of duty” and a betrayal of victims.

He said: “I think it feels like he prioritised his position and the reputation of his church above the plight of the victims and, because Smyth was still alive at that time, above other potential victims as well.”

The Archbishop initially refused to quit, saying he had apologised for his own failures and the abuse by the Church in general but did not intend to resign.

In a statement to the Telegraph on Monday, a Lambeth Palace spokesman said:

The Archbishop reiterates his horror at the scale of John Smyth’s egregious abuse, as reflected in his public apology. He has apologised profoundly both for his own failures and omissions, and for the wickedness, concealment and abuse by the church more widely. As he has said, he had no awareness or suspicion of the allegations before he was told in 2013 and therefore having reflected, he does not intend to resign. He hopes the Makin review supports the ongoing work of building a safer church here and around the world.

It is the first time an Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned due to scandal. His predecessor Rowan Williams stepped down in 2012, but this was to take up a position as master of Magdalene College.

Welby knew Smyth from his time volunteering at Christian summer camps in the 1970s and contributed financially to his ministry during the 1980s. He claims to have had no awareness of Smyth’s abuse before 2013, though has recently admitted that he had been warned to “stay away” from Smyth in 1981. Welby told the Makin review this warning was vague and he assumed based on “incompatible personalities” rather than anything sinister. It evidently did not register as a cause for concern. He continued to send Smyth a Christmas card.

Unbeknownst to Welby, a secret report was compiled on Smyth’s abuse in 1982 by Mark Ruston, a vicar who interviewed 16 of his victims. However, following the report, rather than exposing Smyth or informing the police, the matter was covered up and Smyth encouraged to relocate to Zimbabwe, where he continued his abuse.

Whatever Welby did or did not know before 2013, the thrust of the criticism of the Archbishop is what he failed to do after 2013 when, now installed in Canterbury, he was informed of the full extent of Smyth’s abuse.

Welby was clearly at fault, as he admitted before he resigned when he apologised for not doing more. But he was also badly let down by his advisers. He was told by his then chaplain Jo Bailey Wells that the Bishop of Ely, Stephen Conway, who was handling the case for the Church, considered that the trust responsible for the camps (the Titus Trust) must not be informed at that point, because the matter was being investigated by the police. Makin writes: “Welby is told, therefore, that the matter is being dealt with, the police have been informed and a letter has been sent to the appropriate Bishop in Cape Town.”

Bailey Wells subsequently advised Stephen Conway that she would leave it to the Ely diocese to pursue and take no further action until the police had provided further advice. She has released a statement saying that at the time she was “not aware of the nature or extent of the allegations”.

However, it wasn’t actually the case that the police were investigating at the time, and damnably for Welby, he did not follow the matter up after this. This is despite the clear scale and severity of abuse, Welby’s personal connection to Smyth and the fact that at the time Smyth was still alive and active. Welby only took further action after the exposé in 2017. Even then, it took him until 2021 to do what he had promised in 2017 and meet with victims.

Makin acknowledges: “Welby advised reviewers that he was consistently following advice from police and safeguarding colleagues.”

In other words, Welby is not accused of failing to follow correct safeguarding procedure. Rather, he is accused of failing to go beyond that procedure and make sure action was being taken. Because he knew he was following procedure (and maintains he didn’t know before 2013) he thought he could survive. But he was wrong. Following the letter of the law was not enough on this occasion, not when you’re the Archbishop of Canterbury and you knew the perpetrator personally, and when it involves the most prolific known abuser in the Church’s history who at the time was still at large. Welby failed to see the additional dimensions of the scandal, beyond the strict adherence to safeguarding protocol and advice, and when this came to light he lost the confidence of his colleagues and the wider public.

Part of the problem he faced was that he had himself taken a very firm attitude to others over alleged safeguarding infractions, most notoriously suspending the Bishop of Lincoln, Christopher Lowson for almost two years in 2019 for similar allegations of failing to handle safeguarding matters correctly. Welby later reinstated him and apologised. In the past few weeks Welby told a podcast that covering up child abuse was a “dismissal offence” and the Church would take tough action against those seeking to protect “wicked people”. Little surprise, then, that he could not hang on when the tables turned.

Justin Welby has been a highly controversial Archbishop of Canterbury over the 11 years he has been in post, particularly among conservatives both inside and outside the Church. He has made numerous political interventions, invariably from the political Left, including last year criticising the Conservative Government’s flagship Rwanda scheme to address illegal immigration. He has branded his church “deeply institutionally racist” and backed radical race-based initiatives, such as a commitment to give away £100 million of C of E funds in ‘reparation’ schemes. He has driven forward an extreme eco-agenda, with the C of E committed to hitting Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030. And he recently faced calls to resign after bringing in church services for the blessing of same-sex couples and admitting that he no longer accepted the Church’s biblical teaching on marriage.

He came under fire for closing churches during Covid and for what was widely seen as a managerialist, anti-parish agenda inspired by the disgraced former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells of Horizon scandal infamy, whom he backed to be Bishop of London in 2017.

He was also facing a further challenge this week in a judicial review of a decision not to allow a disciplinary case to be brought by Rev Dr. Bernard Randall, a chaplain who was banned from ministry for giving a sermon at a private school on identity politics and LGBT ideology. Despite being cleared of all wrongdoing, Randall remains barred from ministry due to a decision by the Bishop of Derby, Libby Lane (known for being the C of E’s first female bishop). The judicial review addresses Welby’s failure to permit Randall to bring a disciplinary case against Lane, a failure described by a leading lawyer as “plainly wrong“.

Church attendance has plummeted under Welby’s tenure as he was unable to reverse the long term decline and Covid dealt a hammer blow to Anglican churchgoing. Since 2013, usual Sunday attendance fell from 788,000 to just 557,000, with a particularly steep drop since 2020.

Conservatives will not miss Welby and many had long wished to see the back of him. However, it was when liberals and senior clergy joined in the resignation calls that it became clear he could not cling on.

All eyes will be on who will succeed him. With a liberal currently as Archbishop of York, the Church of England and global Anglican Communion will need an orthodox cleric in Canterbury to have any chance of holding the show together. However, the usual pattern is for a liberal to succeed the ‘conservative’ (such was his background) Justin Welby. Perhaps York’s Stephen Cottrell will move to Canterbury and an evangelical be put in York – though that would be scarcely less divisive as Cottrell is not an acceptable figure to conservatives.

In the meantime, the key post of Canterbury will be vacant, just as the Church prepares next year to bring in services that closely resemble same-sex weddings, a development that is threatening to split the Church.

It’s not a happy time for the Established Church.

Stop Press: Gareth Roberts thinks he knows who will be on the shortlist to replace Welby.