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Holy Smoke: how abuse scandals shattered the Church of England but were hidden by the Vatican

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4785 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this end-of-year episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson discusses the abuse scandals that have forced the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to resign his post, his predecessor Lord Carey to resign his ministry as a priest, and now threaten the survival of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterill. 

These developments are an unprecedented disaster for the Church of England – but how many Roman Catholics realise that Pope Francis would also be facing demands for his resignation if the details of various horrifying scandals were not being allegedly concealed by the Vatican and its media allies? 

Transcript

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0:00.0

You can get three months of The Spectator for just £15 and a free bottle of Porreut

0:04.9

champagne if you go to spectator.com.uk for slash jingle.

0:09.1

This offer is UK only and subject to availability. Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectators' Religion Podcast.

0:27.5

I'm Damien Thompson.

0:31.7

It's the last day of 2024, a year in which the hierarchy of the Church of England was blown apart by its failure to

0:41.5

address abuse scandals. And the same thing would have happened in the Catholic Church, too,

0:47.9

but for the cowardice of the media. But more of that later. In November, an abuse scandal

0:53.9

claimed the scalp of none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury,

0:57.8

Justin Welby, who was forced to resign when it emerged that he had failed to take sufficient action,

1:04.1

anything like sufficient action, against John Smythe, a charismatic evangelical barrister,

1:10.1

whose so-called ministry involved the sadistic

1:13.1

beatings of schoolboys in England and Africa. After becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013,

1:20.0

Wellby did very little to ensure that Smyth was prosecuted before his death in 2018,

1:25.5

and he also, for a long time, declined to meet Smythe's victims.

1:30.3

Then, earlier this month, Welby's predecessor won as Arch Bishop of Canterbury, George Carey,

1:37.0

resigned his ministry as a priest in the Church of England, after a BBC investigation revealed

1:42.3

that he had lobbied for an alleged child abuser, the Reverend David Tudor,

1:47.6

to be allowed back into ministry, following allegations of assault against teenage girls.

1:54.0

Meanwhile, the shadow of the Tudor scandal now hangs over England's other primate,

1:59.0

the Archbishop of Stephen Cottrell, who was scheduled to

2:02.4

take over the leadership of the Church of England until Welby's successor is chosen.

2:07.5

Cottrell was Bishop of Chonsford, when the Reverend David Tudor, already disgraced, was made an

...

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