LONDON — Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned Tuesday after an independent investigation found that he failed to alert authorities about a serial physical and sexual abuser who preyed on more than 100 young boys and men at Christian holiday camps on two continents.
Welby learned in 2013, shortly after taking the reins of the global Anglican church, that John Smyth had victimized about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and 85 more in Africa over five decades, the independent Makin Review found.
But the abuse allegations against Smyth weren’t made public until 2017 when police, prompted by a report by Britain’s Channel 4 television station, launched an investigation.
Welby, the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, said in a statement he was stepping down “in sorrow” and “having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King.”
In his resignation letter, Welby acknowledged “personal and institutional responsibility” for “wrongly” believing that there wasn’t a need to make a formal report to police when he was first told about Smyth.
He said the exact timing of his departure would be decided at a later date since “it is my duty to honor my constitutional and church responsibilities.”
But Welby has faced mounting calls to resign since the damning, 251-page report on Smyth, a prominent lawyer who volunteered at Christian holiday camps, was published last Thursday.
“John Smyth was an appalling abuser of children and young men,” the report stated. “His abuse was prolific, brutal and horrific. His victims were subjected to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks.”
It found that from July 2013, the Church of England knew “at the highest level” about Smyth and should have “properly and effectively” reported him to the relevant authorities.
“There was a distinct lack of curiosity shown by these senior figures and a tendency toward minimization of the matter, demonstrated by the absence of any further questioning and follow-up,” the report stated.
The independent investigators also reported that Welby and Smyth crossed paths at Christian holiday camps run by a British trust between 1975 and 1979 and exchanged Christmas cards for several years.
“He knew John Smyth from the Iwerne camps and was in John Smyth’s dormitory for two camps,” excerpts of the report that were stated. “He has described being ‘impressed’ by John Smyth and reacting to his apparent power of intellect and charismatic [in the lay sense] personality. He says that they were never close, however.”
Smyth was already under investigation by police in the United Kingdom when he died in 2018 at age 77 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury, said Welby’s resignation was “the right and honorable thing to do.”
“As a church, we continue to work towards and must achieve a more victim-centred and trauma-informed approach to safeguarding within the Church of England, and this must address the broader questions of culture and leadership,” he added in a statement.
Andrew Morse, who said he was abused by Smyth as a teenager, told The Guardian that Welby’s resignation was “a positive step in a very bleak situation that has existed ever since Smyth started beating me and my friends more than 40 years ago.”
A petition calling for Welby’s resignation, created by members of the national assembly of the Church of England, had garnered over 13,000 signatures at the time of his announcement on Tuesday.
When asked if Welby should resign, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the matter was ultimately for the Church to address but he emphasized the “clearly horrific” allegations of abuse, adding that it was evident the victims had been “failed very, very badly.”
While Welby said he wasn’t made aware of Smyth’s abusive behavior until 2013, the Makin Review found that back in 1982 there had been an internal investigation into Smyth and that recipients of that report “participated in an active cover-up” to prevent its findings from coming to light.
Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984 and later relocated to South Africa, the review found. He continued to abuse boys and young men in Zimbabwe, and there is evidence that the abuse continued in South Africa.
Hannah Peart reported from London. Corky Siemaszko reported from New York City.
The Associated Press contributed.
