Justin Welby, the head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, has resigned after an investigation found he failed to inform police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.
Pressure had been building on the Archbishop of Canterbury after release of the finding kindled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church. Some members of the General Synod, the church’s national assembly, started a petition calling for Welby to step down, saying he had “lost the confidence of his clergy.”
“I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honoured to serve,” he said in a statement.
The strongest outcry came from the victims of John Smyth.
Smyth, who died in South Africa in 2018 at age 75, physically, sexually, psychologically and spiritually abused about 30 boys and young men in the U.K. and 85 in Africa over five decades, a 251-page report released last week and commissioned by the church found. Smyth is believed to be the most prolific serial abuser associated with the church.
Archbishop knew of abuse claims a decade ago
Andrew Morse, who was repeatedly beaten by Smyth over a period of five years, said that resigning was a chance for Welby to start repairing the damage caused by the church’s handling of historical abuse cases more broadly.
“I believe that now is an opportunity for him to resign,” Morse told the BBC before Welby stepped down. “I say opportunity in the sense that this would be an opportunity for him to stand with the victims of the Smyth abuse and all victims that have not been treated properly by the Church of England in their own abuse cases.”
Welby’s resignation comes against the backdrop of widespread historical sexual abuse in the Church of England. A 2022 report found that deference to the authority of priests, taboos surrounding the discussion of sexuality and a culture that gave more support to alleged perpetrators than their victims helped make the Church of England “a place where abusers could hide.”
A secret report of the Smyth abuse was compiled by a minister in 1982 and other church officers were aware of it, but police were never contacted, last week’s Makin Report said.
Church officials, including Welby, had another opportunity to report Smyth — and prevent any potential further abuse — when they learned of it in 2013, the report said.
Welby, who attended the Christian camps and had known Smyth, said he was unaware of the abuse before 2013.
“Nevertheless, the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated,” Welby said last week. The report said that if Smyth had been reported to police at that time, it could have uncovered the truth and led to a possible criminal conviction.
“Despite the efforts of some individuals to bring the abuse to the attention of authorities, the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup,” Keith Makin, who led the review, said in the report.
Word of Smyth’s abuse was not made public until a 2017 investigation from Britain’s Channel 4.
Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984 and later relocated to South Africa. He continued to abuse boys and young men in Zimbabwe, and there is evidence that the abuse continued in South Africa until he died in August 2018.
Leader of world’s 85 million Anglicans
Welby’s position has put him in the spotlight in the past two years, in church ceremonies surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles.
Now 68, he was made the senior prelate of the Church of England in 2013, becoming the spiritual head of 85 million Anglicans in 165 countries.
Welby was cheered by admirers for his vocal campaigning on societal issues such as fighting poverty, and had been very open about his own past, including discussing his parents’ struggle with alcoholism and his own temptation to self-harm.
But his tenure covered a decade of major upheaval in which he was forced to navigate rows over homosexual rights and women clerics between liberal churches, mostly in North America and Britain, and their conservative counterparts, especially in Africa.
His successor’s main challenges will include holding together the increasingly fractious worldwide Anglican community and attempting to reverse a decline in church attendance, which is down a fifth in Britain since 2019.
Church procedures for the appointment of a new archbishop of Canterbury require a body of clerics and a chair, nominated by the British prime minister, to put two names forward to him.