Holy Smoke: the tin ear of Justin Welby
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
The 2024 Makin report concluded that the Church of England missed many opportunities to investigate the late John Smyth, one of the most prolific abusers associated with the Anglican Church. However, the biggest headline from the interview was that Welby would 'forgive' John Smyth were he alive today. Albeit unintentionally, the former Archbishop of Canterbury ended up cementing his reputation as an inflexible micro-manager with a tin ear for the views of abuse survivors and his own clergy.
Where does the interview leave the Church of England? The appointees to the Crown Nominations Committee, the body which will consider the successor to Welby, will soon be known. How should this scandal influence them? And, with mounting reports that Pope Francis has shielded Catholic sexual predators, how does the handling of abuse allegations by Canterbury and Rome compare?
The Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie, Vicar of Charlbury in Oxfordshire and the editor-at-large of The Fence magazine, joins Damian Thompson to discuss the abuse crises that seem to be engulfing all the mainstream Churches.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you enjoyed the Spectator's podcasts, why not subscribe to the magazine as well? |
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| 0:28.3 | Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Damien Thompson. |
| 0:36.2 | The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is back in the headlines again. |
| 0:40.4 | On Sunday, he was interviewed by the BBC's Laura Kuntzberg about the circumstances that led to his resignation last year, his failure to act over the horrible |
| 0:46.4 | predatory crimes of John Smythe, a powerful lay Anglican lawyer who's said to have abused 130 boys in Britain and Africa before he died in 2018. |
| 0:59.2 | Would you like the victims of John Smith to forgive you? |
| 1:03.2 | Obviously, but it's not about me. |
| 1:08.3 | When we talk about safeguarding, the centre of it is the other victims and survivors. |
| 1:14.8 | I have never, ever said to a survivor, you must forgive, because that is their sovereign, absolute, |
| 1:29.2 | individual choice. |
| 1:32.5 | Everyone wants to be forgiven, |
| 1:39.0 | but to demand forgiveness is to abuse again. The making report, though, the official report into this does suggest it says it's really unlikely that you |
| 1:44.9 | didn't know anything before 2013 I you can believe it or not I did not have a clue you wrote to |
| 1:53.4 | forgive is not to pretend that nothing's happened it's the opposite it accepts the full weight of the |
| 2:00.2 | wrong do you forgive John Smythe? |
| 2:05.9 | Yes. I don't think Justin Welby intended Sunday's biggest headline to be, |
| 2:14.3 | Wellby says he forgives serial abuser John Smythe, but it was, and it was a blunder on the |
| 2:22.0 | former Archbishop's part, though I think it is worth reading the whole quote. |
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