Anglican Church head, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, resigns over handling of child abuse
London — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, head of the Anglican Church, resigned Tuesday after a review found that he and other senior church leaders had covered up the “prolific and abhorrent” abuse of over 100 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and other countries by a British lawyer who helped lead Christian summer camps in the U.K. and other countries.
John Smyth was accused of attacking boys and young men he met at Christian camps in the 1970s and 1980s. He died in South Africa in 2018 at the age of 77 without ever facing any legal proceedings.
“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 said in a statement announcing his resignation. “For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done.”
wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and delivering the sermon at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
“I think, rightly, people are asking the question: ‘Can we really trust the Church of England to keep us safe?’ And I think the answer at the moment is ‘no,'” Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley told CBS News’ partner network BBC News, calling on Welby to resign.
Andrew Morse, who told the BBC he was abused for years by Smyth as a teenager, had also called for Welby to resign. He said Welby’s “admission that in 2013, which is really modern day in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s, that he didn’t do enough, that he wasn’t rigorous… is enough in my mind to confirm that Justin Welby, along with countless other Anglican churchmen, were part of a cover-up about the abuse.”
Morse said he was beaten several times by Smyth during his youth, and that further abuse could have been stopped if Welby had acted when he found out about Smyth’s actions in 2013.
“It is those African lives and those African victims that are very much on my conscience — and I would hope on the archbishop’s conscience too.”
Haley Ott
Source: cbsnews.com