Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigns over child abuse scandal

Justin Welby, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Church, has resigned over claims he failed to respond adequately to accusations against one of the most prolific child abusers in the church’s history.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby has been forced to resign. Picture: Getty Images.

Archbishop Justin Welby, the most senior bishop in the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has resigned under pressure over allegations that he failed to respond adequately to accusations against one of the most prolific child abusers in the church’s history.

After his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, Welby was informed that John Smyth, a senior barrister, had groomed and abused more than 100 boys in the U.K. and Africa beginning in the 1970s, according to an independent report into the episode published last week. The report concluded that Welby had a moral responsibility to pursue that information further but didn’t do so adequately. Smyth died in 2018 at age 77.

Welby said in a statement on X that his stepping aside “was in the best interests of the Church of England.”

Statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury.https://t.co/aNnuLBMapopic.twitter.com/pIIR1911QU

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) November 12, 2024

His decision came after a bishop and several survivors of the physical abuse called for his resignation as head of the Anglican church, which counts more than 85 million members worldwide.

The decision marks a premature end to the career of one of the most high-profile religious figures in British life. Welby officiated at the marriage of Prince William, the heir to the throne, to Princess Catherine, and presided over the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the king’s coronation.

The affable former oil executive talked openly about his battles with depression and how he turned to God to help deal with the death of his young daughter in a car crash in the 1980s. During his 11-year tenure as archbishop he attempted, with limited success, to broker a compromise between liberal and conservative wings of the Anglican communion over issues including same-sex marriage and female clergy. Welby had previously hinted that he wished to stay in the post for another two years.

Ultimately, his tenure was undone by a scandal that has stained several Christian religious institutions, including the Catholic church: the inability to root out and punish abuse within. Welby is one of the few senior church leaders to take responsibility for the issue.

The scandal that brought down Welby centred on a man who used his links to the Anglican church to win the trust of boys and young men. Smyth in the 1970s and 80s targeted mostly school-age boys whom he would punish for “sinning” by caning them severely, sometimes in a soundproof shed in his garden, the report said. The boys were initially groomed at Christian summer camps and at Winchester College, a private school. The beatings were sometimes so bad that the boys were given diapers to wear so that the blood wouldn’t stain their clothes, the survivors said.

Winchester College has said it apologises unreservedly for its part in the terrible experiences of Smyth’s victims.

The Church of England was told about the abuse in the early 1980s, but senior members of the clergy covered it up, according to the report by Keith Makin, who led the review. Around that time, Smyth moved to Zimbabwe and then South Africa, where the report said he continued to abuse boys.

The Church of England said it welcomed the independent review’s recommendations. “We know that no words can undo the damage done to people’s lives both by him and by the failure of individuals in the Church and other institutions to respond well,” the church said in a statement from its heads of safeguarding.

Smyth directly physically abused 30 boys and young men in the U.K., as well as 85 boys and young men in Africa, the report said, though the total number of victims might be far higher, it added. “Smyth is, arguably, the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England,” the report concluded.

The abuse was brought to the attention of Welby in 2013, but Smyth wasn’t reported to the police, according to Makin’s report. Welby, in his resignation statement, said he was told in 2013 that the police had been notified of Smyth’s abuse. “I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow,” he wrote. “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.” Smyth died of a suspected heart attack in South Africa in 2018.

In the wake of the report, several survivors publicly criticised Welby, who initially refused to resign over the matter. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer effectively made Welby’s decision untenable after he said that the victims were “very badly” let down by the Church and that the matter was for the Church of England.

Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in London. Picture: AFP.

A commission of 16 people, mostly members of the clergy, now must choose two preferred candidates for the role of the archbishop. King Charles III will then make the appointment on the advice of the British prime minister. This process normally takes many months.

Unlike the pope, who holds ultimate authority over Catholic teaching around the world, the archbishop of Canterbury has no formal power over the autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion. He relies on dialogue and compromise, which so far have proved inadequate to Anglicanism’s seismic rift over human sexuality. Welby, who had a secular career before entering the priesthood, was brought in as a pragmatic leader who would heal those divisions but ultimately he struggled to reconcile the views of conservative churches in Africa with more liberal ones in Europe and America.

During his tenure, the Church of England has been dogged by allegations that it failed to act over historic abuse cases. In 2020, a U.K. government-backed investigation found that 390 church employees, including clergy, were convicted of sex abuse between the 1940s and 2018. And in 2018 alone, the church received 449 reports of abuse, many of them involving child pornography.

The Makin report paints a stark picture of repeated inaction over Smyth’s behaviour, even after several people spoke out. Welby himself repeatedly crossed paths with Smyth, who between 1974 and 1981 was chairman of an organisation that ran evangelical Christian holiday camps. Welby, who twice shared a dormitory with Smyth while attending the camps, sent Smyth Christmas cards and donated small sums to his ministry in Zimbabwe. Welby told the review that he didn’t know the full extent of Smyth’s abuses until 2013. U.K. police only formally began investigating Smyth in 2017 after the U.K.’s Channel 4 television aired a program about his alleged abuse.

Andrew Morse, who said he was abused by Smyth as a boy, criticised Welby in an interview with the BBC. “He didn’t do enough,” said Morse. “Justin Welby along with countless other Anglican churchmen were part of a cover-up about the abuse.” Welby said he would follow through on a commitment to meet Smyth’s victims and had delegated his other responsibilities for safeguarding until a risk assessment process was completed.

“The last few days have renewed my long felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England,” Welby wrote in his statement published Tuesday. “For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done.”

Dow Jones