(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, leader of Anglicans worldwide, announced Tuesday that he will resign after heavy pressure prompted by a horrific report on a serial lay abuser involved in Anglican ministry for children.
An investigation found that Welby failed to act after learning in 2013 about the sexual and physical abuse of John Smyth, a prominent attorney and volunteer at Christian summer camps who was discovered to have abused more than 100 boys and men before his death in 2018.
The 251-page Makin Review, published last week, details how Smyth groomed the boys over a period of years and subjected them to “brutal and horrific” abuse that involved, for some victims, beatings with a bamboo cane until they bled while in a soundproofed garden shed.
Welby said in a statement that he did not go to law enforcement because he was “told that police had been notified,” and he “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,” Welby declared.
While Welby said he had “no idea or suspicion” of the abuse accusations before 2013, the Makin Review stated this was unlikely, noting that Church officials were first notified about Smyth’s abuse as far back as 1982, when they were given the results of an investigation into complaints about Smyth.
“The recipients of that report ‘participated in an active cover-up’ to prevent its findings from coming to light, the Makin Review found,” according to Reuters.
Welby himself acknowledged this “long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth” uncovered by the Makin Review.
Smyth’s abuses weren’t made public until a 2017 investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 television station, which prompted an investigation by police in Hampshire. Law enforcement was reportedly preparing to question Smyth when he died.
The Church Mouse blog concluded that another 2022 report, along with the Makin Review, “reveal a devastating dereliction of safeguarding duties by a large number of people and organisations.”