Archbishop of Canterbury , the head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, Justin Welby, resigned on Tuesday in the midst of a protracted sexual abuse scandal. Following an independent investigation, Welby resigned upon the discovery of his negligence to notify authorities of a volunteer’s repeated sexual and physical abuse at Christian summer camps as soon as he learned of it.
Who is the Archbishop of Canterbury?
At 68, Justin Welby served as 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. After eleven years of employment in the oil business, he quit in 1989 to pursue studies for the priesthood. Before being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, Welby was ordained in 1992 and spent a lot of time in the Middle East and Africa. Even though he was an accomplished mediator who had helped settle disputes in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, he had trouble bringing the Anglican Communion together globally.
There were some conflicts between the Anglican Communion. The church’s doctrines on homosexuality and women’s roles have caused division among the Anglicans, as they have among many other Christian faiths. While churches in America and England have embraced the LGBT community and have begun to ordain women as bishops and priests, some more conservative churches in Asia and Africa have opposed these developments. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s power within the Anglican Communion has been diminished as a result of those conflicts.
What is the Archbishop of Canterbury
The head of the Church of England and the traditional spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion is the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury is regarded as the primate of the Anglican Communion, although each of the 46 churches that make up the Communion has its own primate.
Why did Welby resign?
The long-awaited findings of an independent inquiry into the late John Smyth, who over fifty years sexually, psychologically, and physically assaulted over 100 boys and young men at Christian summer camps in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom, was revealed last week. The 251-page inquiry came to the conclusion that Welby did not notify authorities about Smyth’s abuse when he learned of it in August 2013, shortly after he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. According to the investigation, if he had, Smyth could have been apprehended sooner and many of his victims would not have suffered abuse.
At first, Welby refused to step down, claiming he had been misinformed that the police had already been alerted and that he shouldn’t tamper with their investigation in any way. However, as more victims and church authorities chastised him for not accepting responsibility for the crisis, his position became untenable. Welby announced his resignation, saying, “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”
Other Abuse Allegations
Like the Catholic Church, the Church of England has been the target of numerous accusations that its members, including priests, abused young women and men. According to a government-established independent investigation, 390 church members were found guilty of child sexual abuse between the 1940s and 2018. The investigation concluded that the Church of England was “a place where abusers could hide” due to a number of factors, including deference to the authority of priests, taboos surrounding the subject of sexuality, and a culture that supported alleged offenders more than their victims. After Welby was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, his supporters claimed he played a key role in transforming the church’s ethos and enhancing its safeguarding practices.
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