Welbies resignation: one step, but not enough for real responsibility!

Welbies resignation: one step, but not enough for real responsibility!

The time of the excuses is over - the abuse scandals in the church are systemic!

A storm moves up! The resigning leaders like Justin Welby are just the tip of the iceberg. What is really needed is a profound institutional responsibility! The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, announced that it would recover in January after an independent examination brought the shocking offense of the child abuse John Smyth to light. A man who abused up to 130 boys and young men in Christian holiday camps in Africa and England for over four decades!

The Makin check has revealed that Smyth, a lawyer with connections to the Christian community, traumatized not only physically, but also mentally and spiritually. He died in 2018 without ever being held accountable for his actions. The victims' reports are heartbreaking - many waited for over 40 years to talk about abuse, for fear of not being believed or accused.

a failure across the board

The terrible actions of Smyth became known in the 1980s, but the Church of England failed to react appropriately. Instead, the abuse was further tolerated! Welby, who voluntarily worked in the 1970s in the holiday camps in which Smyth committed his deeds, claimed that he had no knowledge of the allegations. But the Makin check questions this and comes to the conclusion that this is "unlikely".

Welby admitted that he found out about Smyths in 2013, but it failed to report this to the police. If he had done this, Smyth would probably have been held accountable much earlier, which would have saved the victims a long time of pain. In his declaration of withdrawal, Welby said that he had to assume "personal and institutional responsibility for the long and re -traumatizing time between 2013 and 2024"

But this resignation did not come voluntarily! Welby was forced to resign under immense pressure after leading clergymen and even Prime Minister Keir Strandmer publicly criticized him. The wave of outrage on social media was not to be ignored!

a system that fails

But Welby is not the only high -ranking church representative who is criticized. Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotrell, also faces allegations because he had a priest in his position, even though he was banished by the church to be alone with children. Cotrell is accused of having not adequately protected the victims and has so far refused to withdraw.

The church must finally take responsibility! It is time for you to implement a serious training program for border violations and sexual exploitation in all of your training centers. The independent examination of the sexual abuse of children found in 2022 that abuse by clergymen in the United Kingdom is endemic. Often perpetrators are simply transferred to another community instead of being held accountable.

The reports of sexual abuse are not just a problem of the Church of England. In Spain, over 200,000 children have been abused by the Catholic Church since 1940. In France, an investigation of 2021 showed that at least 216,000 children in the Catholic Church were sexually abused. These scandals are global and show that it is a systemic problem that cannot be ignored.

Time for excuses and hesitant resignation is over! The church must finally act to hold the perpetrators into account and to support the victims. The voice of the survivors must be heard and the institutions must finally face their responsibility!