Justin Welby steps down as head of Anglican Church over child abuse scandal

CBS NEWS

London — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, head of the global Anglican Church, resigned Tuesday after a review found that he and other senior church leaders had covered up the “prolific and abhorrent” abuse of over 100 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and other countries by a British lawyer who helped lead Christian summer camps in the U.K. and other countries.

John Smyth was accused of attacking boys and young men he met at Christian camps in the 1970s and 1980s. He died in South Africa in 2018 at the age of 77 without ever facing any legal proceedings.

“The last few days have renewed my long felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England,” Welby said in a statement announcing his resignation. “For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done.”

An independent Church of England review into the handling of complaints against Smyth found last week that, “despite the efforts of some individuals to bring the abuse to the attention of authorities, the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup,” the leader of the review said.

“I am so sorry that in places where these young men, and boys, should have felt safe and where they should have experienced God’s love for them, they were subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse,” Welby said in an initial statement responding to the review’s findings. “I am sorry that concealment by many people who were fully aware of the abuse over many years meant that John Smyth was able to abuse overseas and died before he ever faced justice.”