Archbishop of Canterbury resigns after church abuse scandal
Cathy Newman
Presenter
Justin Welby hasn’t said when he’ll go. But replacing him won’t be easy. Victims of decades of church abuse are calling for root and branch reform.
Some 18 months after anointing the king, Justin Welby asked him for his gracious permission to resign, becoming the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern history to be forced out.
Justin Welby wrote on X:
‘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.
It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’
Statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury.https://t.co/aNnuLBMapo pic.twitter.com/pIIR1911QU
— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) November 12, 2024
Smyth’s victims told us this was just the start of the church facing up to its legacy of abuse.
Seven years ago, Channel 4 News revealed the details of brutal beatings by Smyth in three separate countries.
18mThe church ordered former social services director Keith Makin to carry out a review. Published last week, it accused the church of a cover up and Justin Welby himself of failing to do enough to stop the abuse.
Yet last week, the Archbishop’s refusal to quit prompted fury from his opponents in the Church and the victims themselves.
One victim we’re calling Graham played a crucial part in the Archbishop’s demise. Graham reported his own abuse to the church in 2012. That culminated in Justin Welby himself being informed the following year that the Bishop of Ely had written to his counterpart in Cape Town detailing the seriousness of Smyth’s horrific activities.
In an interview at Lambeth Palace with me last week Justin Welby accepted what he called his own “really shaming failure” to do enough to stop John Smyth’s abuse. Smyth would then go on to abuse boys and young men in South Africa, until his death in 2018.
But the cover up by the church actually began much earlier still – back in the 1980s.
16 year old Guide Nyachuru was found dead in a swimming pool at a Christian holiday camp led by Smyth, who was later charged with culpable homicide. The case unravelled.
Last week the Makin Review revealed shocking details about Smyth’s summer camps in Zimbabwe with ‘Reports of regular abuse by John Smyth including beating with table tennis bat, enforced nudity, naked swimming, and showering..’
He also gave ‘regular lectures about masturbation’ and slept ‘in dormitory area with boys.’
Yet the abuse in Zimbabwe could have been stopped if a secret report by a vicar in Britain in 1982 – ten years before Guide died – had been acted on. Nearly 30 years after Guide’s tragic death, Justin Welby wrote to his family apologising.
Justin Welby maintains that though he exchanged Christmas cards with Smyth in the 1980s and 1990s and even gave money to Smyth’s ministry in Zimbabwe, he didn’t know of the abuse until 2013. But the Makin Review makes clear that several bishops and senior church leaders DID know long before then.
Justin Welby hasn’t said when he’ll go. But replacing him won’t be easy. Victims of decades of church abuse are calling for root and branch reform. Whoever does become Archbishop of Canterbury may find uneasy lies the head that wears the mitre.