LONDON, (Reuters) – Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, resigned “in sorrow” yesterday, saying he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into allegations of abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps decades ago.
Welby, also the most senior cleric of the Church of England, had faced calls to resign after a report last week found he had taken insufficient action to stop one of the Church’s most prolific serial abusers.
Church commentators and historians said it was the first time an Anglican archbishop had resigned over an abuse scandal.
In his resignation letter, Welby said he must take “personal and institutional responsibility” for a lack of action on the “heinous abuses”.
“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. “As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”
Welby’s tenure covered a decade of major upheaval in which he was forced to navigate splits over homosexual rights and women clerics between liberal churches, mostly in North America and Britain, and their conservative counterparts, especially in Africa.
The Anglican churches in African countries such as Uganda and Nigeria are likely to welcome his resignation, after saying last year they no longer had confidence in him.
His successor’s main challenges will include holding together the increasingly fractious worldwide Anglican community and attempting to reverse a decline in church attendance, which is down a fifth in Britain since 2019.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he respected the archbishop’s decision to resign.
Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, the Church’s second-ranking cleric, called Welby’s resignation “the right and honourable thing to do”.
