Senior bishop calls for Justin Welby to resign over Church of England sex abuser

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley described Dr Welby’s position as “untenable” and claimed that the Church was in danger of “losing complete credibility”. The letter – which appears to relate to her suspension of the former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, from active ministry in the diocese of Newcastle over a previous Church safeguarding review – reads: “We would very much like to see a resolution to this situation which enables Sentamu to return to ministry.” In her post on X, formerly Twitter, the Rt Rev Hartley criticised the letter, saying that it signifies “a wider and systemic dysfunction of how the hierarchy of the Church of England has dealt with matters of safeguarding and most particularly the impact of church-related abuse on victims and survivors”. Following the publication of the Makin review last week, a petition by some members of the General Synod – the Church of England’s parliament – has gathered more than 5,000 signatures, urging Dr Welby to resign over the failure of the Church to alert authorities to the “abhorrent” abuse of children and young men by John Smyth QC, a Christian barrister. open image in gallery Vicars in the Church of England have accused the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, of losing the confidence of his clergy The Makin report into the abuse concluded that Dr Welby had possessed at least “some knowledge of the concerns” about Smyth in the early 1980s, and had shown a “lack of curiosity” about the allegations when they surfaced in 2013.