The head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion has resigned. This comes after an investigation found that Justin Welby failed to tell police about serial physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse by a volunteer leader as soon as he became aware of it in 2013.
“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,” the achbishop of Canterbury said in a statement Tuesday (Nov. 12).
Chrch leaders called for him to step down following the release of findings by an independent review on November 7.
Helen-Ann Hartley, the bishop of Newcastle, said Monday (Nov. 11) that his position was “untenable” after some members of the church’s national assembly started a petition calling on Welby to step down because he had “lost the confidence of his clergy.”
The strongest outcry came from the victims of John Smyth, a prominent attorney who notably used a cane to beat camper teenage boys and young men at Christian summer camps in Britain, Zimbabwe and South Africa over five decades.
Smyth used a cane to punish campers for “sins” that included “pride,” making sexual remarks, masturbation or, in one case, looking at a girl too long, according to the report. The victims and Smyth were at least partly, if not fully, naked during the savage beatings.
“The scale and severity of the practice was horrific,” the report noted. “Beatings of 100 strokes for masturbation, 400 for pride, and one of 800 strokes for some undisclosed ‘fall’ are recorded.”
His abuse was not made public until 2017 and he died the following year before being extradited to England.
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.
A 2022 report by the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse found that deference to the authority of clergymen, 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.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England and is considered the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, which has more than 85 million members in 165 countries. He is considered first among equals compared to other primates of the communion.
Some members of the General Synod, the church’s national assembly, have launched a petition calling on Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to resign,
The 251-page report concludes that Welby failed to report Smyth to authorities when he was informed of the abuse in August 2013, shortly after he became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Police were planning to question Smyth at the time of his death and were preparing to extradite him.
A 2022 report by the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse found that deference to the authority of clergymen, 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.”