CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

Church Leader Who Crowned King Charles Resigns Over Sex Abuse Scandal

The Most Reverend Justin Welby had faced growing pressure to go following the publication of a damning review.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior Church of England bishop, spiritual leader of Anglicans, and a friend of King Charles III, resigned Tuesday over his handling of a sex abuse scandal.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby had faced growing pressure to step down after the publication last week of a damning report on the cover-up by the church of a sadist who subjected private schoolboys attending evangelical Christian holiday camps in the 1970s and ’80s to horrendous physical, sexual, and psychological abuse.

The perpetrator, John Smyth, was allowed by church officials to move to South Africa, where he died in 2018 at 75 without ever facing justice for his attacks on as many as 130 boys and young men. The review found Smyth may have faced charges a decade ago had the archbishop reported suspicions to the police.

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“Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury,” Welby, who crowned King Charles at his coronation in Mary 2023, said in a statement.

“The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth,” he added. “When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow. It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.”

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