The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced he will step down from his role following a damning report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England.
The review found that Justin Welby, 68, had failed to act on reports of John Smyth’s “abhorrent” abuse of boys and young men.
In a statement, he said that “it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility” for his response after he was first told about the abuse in 2013.
“As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse,” he added.
“I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church,” Mr Welby said.
“I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England.”
He added that over the days since the report into the handling of Smyth’s abuse was published, he had felt a “profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England”.
“For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done,” he said.
Dr Joanne Grenfell, the Bishop of Stepney and the Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop, said the failings identified in the report into Smyth’s abuse meant it was “now necessary for others to take up the baton”.
“With sadness, I fully respect and understand Archbishop Justin’s decision today to resign,” she said.
“His decision today does not absolve any of us from bringing about the wholesale changes in culture and leadership that are essential in every part of the Church,” she added.
It was not immediately clear when the archbishop would leave his post.
He said he would meet victims and delegate his current safeguarding responsibilities “until the necessary risk assessment process is complete”.
The archbishop had faced mounting pressure to resign after it emerged that he had failed to act on reports of Smyth’s abuse of more than 100 boys and young men.
Smyth was a prominent barrister as well as a lay preacher – a member of the congregation who delivers sermons but is not ordained – who ran summer camps for young Christians.
The report accused him of attacking up to 30 boys he had met at the summer camps during the 1970s and 1980s.
He singled out boys attending the camps and in sessions at leading public schools, including Winchester College, before taking them to his home and beating them with a garden cane in his shed.
The report by Keith Makin described Smyth’s abuse as a “clearly sexually motivated, sadistic regime” of beatings.
Some of the victims had to wear adult nappies because of the bleeding they had suffered.
Smyth then relocated in the 1980s to Zimbabwe, and later South Africa, where he is alleged to have abused a further 85 to 100 “young male children aged 13 to 17”.
Last week’s report concluded that Smyth “could and should” have been reported to the police in 2013, when Church leaders including Welby were presented with details of his abuse.
Inaction from the Church represented a “missed opportunity to bring him to justice,” the report says.
The archbishop had been facing mounting pressure to resign in the days since the report’s publication.
Three members of the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, had accused the archbishop of “allowing abuse to continue” between 2013 and Smyth’s death in 2018.
They launched a petition calling for Mr Welby’s resignation, which had been signed by more than 13,000 people by Tuesday afternoon.
The Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, told the BBC on Monday that Mr Welby’s position was “untenable” after the report.
She said: “I think rightly people are asking the question: ‘Can we really trust the Church of England to keep us safe?’ And I think the answer at the moment is ‘no’.”
Source: BBC