Anglican Church head, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, resigns over handling of child abuse

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.”

Welby has said he was unaware of Smyth’s abuse until 2013, the year he became the archbishop.

“Nevertheless the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated,” Welby said. “Since that time the way in which the Church of England engages with victims and survivors has changed beyond recognition. Checks and balances introduced seek to ensure that the same could not happen today.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior figure in the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church. The New York-based Episcopal Church, which has 1.6 million members, is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion and there are over 7,000 Episcopal churches across the U.S.

Welby has played a central role in many high-profile events, including officiating the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and delivering the sermon at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

“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,'” Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley told CBS News’ partner network BBC News, calling on Welby to resign.

Andrew Morse, who told the BBC he was abused for years by Smyth as a teenager, had also called for Welby to resign. He said Welby’s “admission that in 2013, which is really modern day in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s, that he didn’t do enough, that he wasn’t rigorous… is enough in my mind to confirm that Justin Welby, along with countless other Anglican churchmen, were part of a cover-up about the abuse.”

Morse said he was beaten several times by Smyth during his youth, and that further abuse could have been stopped if Welby had acted when he found out about Smyth’s actions in 2013.

“It is those African lives and those African victims that are very much on my conscience — and I would hope on the archbishop’s conscience too.”