Justin Welby has form when it comes to defending disgraced public figures. In 2022, he had a crack at supporting Prince Andrew, arguing that he was ‘seeking to make amends’ and we should learn to be a more forgiving society. The public pushback against the then Archbishop of Canterbury was notable. This weekend, it was Welby’s chance to defend his own legacy, when he appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg for his first interview since resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury. Thankfully, sweating and Pizza Express did not feature.
Instead, Welby sought to defend his failure to properly respond to allegations against the serial abuser John Smyth – which led to Welby resigning his post last year.
In October, the independent Makin review found that the church had covered up Smyth’s violent abuse for decades. The review also found that Welby had failed to follow-up reports about Smyth’s abuses rigorously enough. Smyth died in 2018 before he could be prosecuted.
Wearing a blue open necked shirt, Welby acknowledged to Kuenssberg that ‘there are no excuses for that kind of failure’ and instead tried to explain why he had failed to act. Welby suggested that he followed the rules ‘probably more than I should have done at times’ and now believes he ‘was not sufficiently pushy’ when the Smyth abuse case landed on his desk.
The Makin report found that Welby had been informed of Smyth’s abuse in August 2013, months after becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. Welby says that he believed the police had been informed of Smyth’s abuses – but Makin found that a police referral had not been made.
To explain why he had not followed this up properly, Welby told Kuenssberg that it had been ‘an overwhelming few weeks’ during which ‘one was trying to prioritise’. Being archbishop is overwhelming – but much of the diary juggle seemed to be his own making as he kicked off a self-imposed plan to visit every single primate of the Anglican Communion over the next 18 months. Kuenssberg has called his admission that he got it wrong ‘baffling’.
Elsewhere in the interview, it was reassuring to hear that Welby now winces when he thinks about his final speech in the Lords, in which he joked about one of his predecessors being beheaded and asked peers to ‘pity my poor diary secretary’ following his resignation. A few months on, he admits he ‘wasn’t in a good space at the time’.
By contrast, physically, Welby now looks better than he has in many months – healthier and less hollow-cheeked – the enormous weight of the role and responsibilities no longer pressing down on him. He tells us that ‘if you want perfect leaders, you won’t have any leaders’.
I confess to feeling slightly sick when Kuenssberg asked him for his ‘most meaningful moment’ as archbishop. Meghan Markle would doubtless have been proud of the soft banality. But there were still signs of the man we saw on that last day in the Lords; he snapped that he was not ‘not the chief executive of Church of England PLC’. The things that hadn’t changed weren’t his fault – if in doubt, blame the General Synod, apparently.
So who on earth was this interview for the benefit of? This interview doesn’t help survivors. One of them, Mark Stibbe, highlighted his frustration at the former archbishop’s implication that Welby himself was the victim. This interview won’t help the church, especially coming so quickly after Welby has stepped down – senior church leaders are hardly queueing to come to his defence. His controversial forgiveness of Smyth doesn’t even help Smyth, long since dead. The only person this interview might just help is Welby himself. Maybe that’s no bad thing.
The immediate headlines after the interview have mainly been horror at the suggestion that Welby says he forgives serial abuser Smyth. As a priest he is somewhat compelled to be in favour of forgiveness, although it has raised questions about the genuineness of his newly found focus on survivors. But he was careful to add that what matters is what survivors think, rather than whether or not he forgives. As he confessed again and again how sorry and ashamed he was, he added ‘everyone wants to be forgiven, but to demand forgiveness is to abuse again’. He cannot make us forgive him either, nor force anyone to forget what has happened, any more than Prince Andrew could in his confessional.
Welby tells us he will now be downsizing – and hopes for a role in mediation and reconciliation. If this is, as he hopes, the last time he goes on television, perhaps we should all breathe a sigh of relief, and pray that he does indeed pursue total obscurity. Maybe Welby should take note of the actions of the late John Profumo after his infamous downfall – and start by reconciling and forgiving himself for what has transpired – before turning his thoughts to any sort of wider reconciliation ministry.
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