Why Justin Welby has stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, stood down yesterday amid intense pressure over his handling of one of the Church of England's worst abuse scandals.

Christian summer camp leader John Smyth subjected dozens of teenage boys to physical, sexual and psychological abuse during the 1970s and 1980s. Welby attended camps run by Smyth in the late 1970s, first as a camper and then as a dormitory officer. He was adamant he never witnessed any abuse at the time, although he did admit he had been informally advised in 1981 to "stay away" from Smyth, and that he was "really not a nice man".

A recent independent review by former director of social services Keith Makin into the Church's historic handling of abuse said the Archbishop showed a "distinct lack of curiosity" when he was informed of the allegations in 2013. A police investigation opened after Channel 4 News reported the claims in 2017, but Smyth died in South Africa the following year before he could be brought to justice. "This delay is something survivors believe that Welby is at least partly to blame for," said The Times.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Welby said it had become clear that he "must take personal and institutional responsibility" for the "long and retraumatising" period of inaction. His resignation came hours after Keir Starmer refused to publicly back the archbishop, and after a petition organised by three priests calling for Welby to step down gathered more than 14,000 signatures.

When Welby was ordained as archbishop in 2013 after a "meteoric rise" from entering the priesthood in 1993. He was a "relatively popular appointment in a notoriously divisive institute", said The Independent. But "it is this latest scandal" that "will now be his legacy".

A former oil executive, he "was chosen largely because of his managerial background, to sort out the Church’s administrative inertia and spiritual shortcomings", said The Guardian. And yet its procedures for handling misconduct claims remain "glacially slow and bureaucratic", while the Church itself appears ever more out of step with the modern world. "If Welby’s managerialism was supposed to keep the show on the road, he has not been particularly successful."

The crisis has potentially "engulfed more senior clergy", said The Daily Telegraph. Victims have called on two bishops and an associate minister to follow the archbishop in resigning over their involvement in the scandal.