Justin Welby resigns as Archbishop of Canterbury over Church’s child abuse ‘conspiracy of silence’

The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned after a damning report exposed a “conspiracy of silence” around a barrister thought to have been the most prolific abuser associated with the Church of England.

Justin Welby had come under growing pressure to stand down over his “failures” to alert authorities about John Smyth QC’s “abhorrent” abuse of children and young men.

On Tuesday, Dr Welby said it was “very clear I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024”.

He said: “The Makin review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth. The last few days have renewed my long-felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England.

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“For nearly 12 years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done. 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.”

Among the calls for Dr Welby to quit was a petition instigated by some members of the General Synod – the Church’s parliament – which gathered more than 10,000 signatures, while a senior bishop issued a public statement describing the Church as being “in danger of losing complete credibility” on safeguarding.

Sir Keir Starmer also piled pressure on Dr Welby, hours before the primate stood down, saying that Smyth’s victims had been “failed very, very badly”.

Later on Tuesday, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said Sir Keir “respects” the archbishop’s decision to resign from his post.

The spokesperson added that while Sir Keir recognises Dr Welby’s “years of service to the Church”, his thoughts “first and foremost remain with the victims in light of the horrific allegations”.

Dr Welby had been resisting the calls for him to resign, but reiterated “his horror at the scale of John Smyth’s egregious abuse, as reflected in his public apology”.

The Makin review into Smyth’s abuse, published last week, concluded that the barrister might have been brought to justice had Dr Welby formally reported it to police a decade ago.

Smyth died aged 77 in Cape Town in 2018 while under investigation by Hampshire Police, and so was “never brought to justice for the abuse”, the review said.

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He is said to have subjected as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks across five decades, in three different countries, permanently marking their lives.

Dr Welby said he had had “no idea or suspicion of this abuse” before 2013, but acknowledged that the review had found that after its wider exposure that year he had “personally failed to ensure” the case was “energetically investigated”.

Although Dr Welby knew Smyth because of his attendance at Iwerne Christian camps in the 1970s and “did have reason to have some concern about him”, the review said this was not the same as suspecting he had committed severe abuses and concluded it was “not possible to establish” whether Dr Welby knew of the severity of the abuses in the UK before 2013.

Dr Welby’s resignation comes after the petition described his role as Archbishop of Canterbury as “no longer tenable”, while the Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, similarly called his position “untenable”.

She told the BBC on Monday that while his resignation was “not going to solve the problem”, it would be “a very clear indication that a line has been drawn, and that we must move towards independence of safeguarding”.

The petition stated: “We must see change, for the sake of survivors, for the protection of the vulnerable, and for the good of the Church – and we share this determination across our traditions.”