Church of England head Justin Welby under pressure to resign amid abuse scandal

The head of the Church of England, spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, is under pressure to resign after an investigation found that 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.

Some members of the General Synod, the church’s national assembly, have started a petition calling on Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to step down, saying he had “lost the confidence of his clergy.” The petition had garnered more than 1,800 signatures on Change.org by late morning London time on Monday.

Calls for Welby’s resignation have grown since Thursday, when the church released the results of an independent review into John Smyth, who sexually, psychologically and physically abused about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and 85 in Africa over five decades.

The 251-page report concluded that Welby failed to report Smyth to authorities when he was informed of the abuse in August 2013, soon after he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Welby last week took responsibility for not ensuring that the allegations were pursued as “energetically” as they should have been after he learned of the abuse, but said he had decided not to resign.

On Monday, his office issued a statement reiterating Welby’s “horror at the scale of John Smyth’s egregious abuse.”

“As he has said, he had no awareness or suspicion of the allegations before he was told in 2013 — and therefore, having reflected, he does not intend to resign,” the statement said. “He hopes the Makin Review supports the ongoing work of building a safer church here and around the world.”

Church officials were first made aware of the abuse in 1982, when they received the results of an internal investigation into Smyth. The recipients of that report “participated in an active cover-up” to prevent its findings from coming to light, the Makin Review found.

Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984, then relocated to South Africa in 2021. 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.

Smyth’s abuse wasn’t made public until a 2017 investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 television, which led Hampshire Police to start an investigation. Police were planning to question Smyth at the time of his death and had been preparing to extradite him.

The Makin Review found that if Smyth had been reported to police in 2013, it could have helped to uncover the truth, prevented further abuse and led to a possible criminal conviction.

“In effect, three and a half years was lost, a time within which John Smyth could have been brought to justice and any abuse he was committing in South Africa discovered and stopped,” the review found.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England and is seen as the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, which has more than 85 million members in 165 countries. He is considered first among equals with respect to the communion’s other primates.