The 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev. Justin Welby, is leaving office today mired in controversy about his safeguarding role over a serial paedophile and after criticism by some Anglican leaders for supporting homosexual unions.
“The church will certainly get things wrong. I will certainly get things wrong,” said Welby when he took up the position of archbishop in March 2013, just a year after he became Bishop of Durham. “We will also get much right and do so already.”
It was likely one of those “things wrong,” however, which led to his resignation. Welby endured criticism by the Makin Review, as reported by Christian Daily International, about his responsibility with the late John Smyth QC, who sexually abused countless boys and young men in the 1970s and 1980s. The review concluded that Smyth would have been stopped sooner if Welby had formally reported concerns disclosed to him a decade ago.
Smyth was reported to be the most prolific serial abuser associated with the Church of England, a previous independent review concluded. He died aged 77 in Cape Town, South Africa in 2018, after being accused of abusing boys at his home in Winchester, England, whom he worked with at a Christian summer camp in the county of Dorset in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the BBC.
“Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury,” said Welby in a statement published on his official website early November (2024).
“The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth. When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.”
Welby also acknowledged that he should take “personal and institutional responsibility” for what happened between 2013 and 2024 - a “long and retraumatising period.”
“I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church. As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”
The now-former archbishop had been first ordained in 1992 after he studied theology at Durham University. Before that, he spent 11 years working as an oil industry executive.
The issue of gay marriage also marked Welby’s tenure after he seemed to change his views while leading the Anglican Communion.
"I stand, as I have always stood over the last few months, with the statement I made at the announcement of my appointment, which is that I support the Church of England's position on this. We have made many statements about this and I stick with that,” he said in 2013, backing the Anglican church’s official opposition to gay marriage, before MPs voted in favor of a change in marital law.
Last year 2024, Welby expressed a different view and said gay unions should be blessed in church.
“All sexual activity should be within a committed relationship and whether it’s straight or gay,” he told “The Rest is Politics” podcast, hosted by Conservative politician Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street Press Secretary for the New Labour Party.
“In other words, we’re not giving up on the idea that sex is within marriage or civil partnership. We’ve put forward a proposal that where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage, equal marriage under the 2014 Act, they should be able to come along to their local, to a church, and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together.”
Conservative Anglican group GAFCON issued a public rebuke in response, making a “serious call for [Welby’s] personal repentance.”
“While he may claim not to have changed the doctrine of marriage, the Archbishop of Canterbury has demonstrably changed the doctrine of sin, by promoting the sanctification of sin by means of a divine blessing,” said the GAFCON Primates’ Council, in a public statement, Oct. 31.
“This is in clear breach of Holy Scripture, which unequivocally teaches that the only proper context for sexual intimacy is in the relationship of a man and woman who have been joined together in marriage. All forms of sexual intimacy outside of this context are condemned as immorality and are behaviors from which the people of God are regularly called to repent (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
“It is also in clear breach of Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which rejected, “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” and which the Archbishop as recently as 2022 declared to be the teaching of the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England.”
“For this reason, in response to his public comments, we solemnly repeat our call for Archbishop Justin Welby to personally and publicly repent of this denial of his ordination and consecration vows, where he promised to, 'teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it.'”
The Archbishop of York, Most Rev. Stephen Cottrell, who has also faced calls to resign over his handling of another sex offender, will temporarily lead the Anglican church until a new Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed.
