Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigns after ‘failures’ over Church of England sex abuser.

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The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has announced that he will step down after facing mounting pressure to quit over his handling of an abuse scandal.

Pressure on Welby has been intensifying since the publication last week of a damning report on the church’s cover-up of John Smyth’s abuse in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later in Zimbabwe and South Africa. About 130 boys are believed to have been victims.


The independent review into the abuse concluded that he might have been brought to justice had the archbishop formally reported it to police a decade ago.

Welby said last week he had considered resigning over his “shameful” decision not to act to deal with reports of abuse by Smyth, a powerful and charismatic barrister who died in 2018, when he was informed of them in 2013.

Justin Welby says he will step down as archbishop of Canterbury

Welby had faced mounting pressure to quit over his handling of John Smyth abuse scandal

www.theguardian.com

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/justin-welby-resigns-archbishop-canterbury-2024-11-12/

 

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1856337001013784973

 

[Twick]

The price of having power and friends is that you must never use that power to protect your friends. So many in lower forget that.

 

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The sister of a 16-year-old boy who drowned while swimming naked at a Christian holiday camp in Zimbabwe run by child abuser John Smyth blames the Church of England for his death.

"The Church knew about the abuses that John Smyth was doing. They should have stopped him. Had they stopped him, I think my brother [Guide Nyachuru] would still be alive," Edith Nyachuru told the BBC.

The British barrister had moved to Zimbabwe with his wife and four children from Winchester in England in 1984 to work with an evangelistic organisation.

This was two years after an investigation revealed he had subjected boys in the UK, many of whom he had met at Christian holiday camps run by a charity he chaired that was linked to the Church, to traumatic physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

The 1982 report, prepared by Anglican clergyman Mark Ruston, about the canings said "the scale and severity of the practice was horrific", with accounts of boys beaten so badly they bled, with one describing how he needed to wear nappies until his wounds scabbed over.

Despite these shocking revelations, mainly involving boys from elite British public schools, the Ruston report was not widely circulated.

‘Church of England to blame for my brother’s death’ - Zimbabwe anger over child abuser John Smyth

John Smyth, a known child abuser in the UK, went to Zimbabwe and set up Christian holiday camps.

www.bbc.com

 

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Former Archbishop of Canterbury Carey quits as priest

It follows a BBC investigation into the Church of England's handling of a sexual abuse case.

www.bbc.com