newsGENERAL SYNOD 2025: The appalling child abuse scandal is the elephant in the room as Church of England leaders meet in London
Justin Welby, forced to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury but still living at Lambeth Palace in London (Picture by Trevor Grundy taken at World Council of Churches (WCC) summit in Busan, South Korea in 2013)
Foxes have lairs and birds have nests but Jesus told us that the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. That won’t be a problem for Justin Welby who has been told he can stay on in Lambeth Palace, the London home of Archbishops of Canterbury for the last 800 years while he looks for a new home in one of the world’s most expensive to live in cities. TREVOR GRUNDY reports –
The 2025 General Synod of the Church of England opens (February 10-14) without a real Archbishop of Canterbury to lead it.
But supporters of Justin Welby, who was forced to step down as ABC on January 6 (his 65th birthday) after failing to take act against paedophiles, need not worry about how he will fare in years to come.
Welby will remain living with his wife at Lambeth Palace for at least six months while he looks around for a new home where he can rest his feet and write his memoirs.
Isn’t that what the good and the great do when they’ve just been given the boot?
A removal van was seen outside the palace on January 12.
No-one knows who that was for but it wasn’t for Justin, an ex-Etonian, former oil executive in West Africa and present multi-millionaire who as a Christian leader delights in getting into pulpits and telling people to take what they have and give to the poor.
He’s not short of a bob or two.
Recently, he received £2.5 million which his mother left him in her will.
He might have to pay £800,000 in inheritance tax but still £1.5 million is worth having when you’re house-hunting.
As ABC, he was paid £85,000 a year.
Pocket money for some.
This week, Church Commissioners will make sure he gets what’s due to him following his resignation.
The Son of Canterbury has loads of places to rest his weary head – Lambeth Palace in London
The sum will be large but won’t rip a hole in the Church’s Endowment Portfolio of £10. 4 billion.
As most people don’t know, the Church of England is one of the largest landowners on earth, with numerous properties in Canterbury, York, Peterborough, Ely and so many other places.
Nicola Denyer, a lay member of the General Synod (the Church of England’s parliament) wants to know what sort of settlement Church Commissioners have in mind for the last ABC and asks – “What are the financial and other benefits included in the settlement agreement by which the Archbishop of Canterbury left his post in January and do the terms of the settlement include a non-disclosure agreement?”
Alan Smith, head of the Church Commissioner, replied that Welby had received the financial benefits to which he is lawfully entitled as a clergy office holder.
Will we be told?
Of course we will.
Just don’t hold your breath.
Church sources say that Welby will be warm and comfy at Lambeth Palace until a new ABC is appointed probably during Autumn this year.
Who that will be is anyone’s guess.
My money’s on Rose Hudson-Wilkin, 63, the Jamaican-born priest and Bishop of Dover.
On January 25, 2025 she raised Christian eyebrows when she said that Justin Welby was like Jesus during the vulnerable children safeguarding scandal that rocked the Church.
She said – “Actually, for me it rings with what happened to Christ. On the one day they are shouting ‘Hosanna, Hosanna’ and then the following day they are shouting ‘Crucify him. Crucify him.”
Anyone who can make a statement as creepy as that is certain to do well in the Church of England hierarchy.
The bishop was speaking after the publication of her autobiography, The Girl from Montego Bay -The autobiography of Britain’s First Black Woman Bishop.”
Justin Welby with York’s Stephen Cottrell. . .
. . . all dressed up and nowhere to go
Meantime, church sources say that in a few years from now, the Archbishop of Canterbury (whoever that might be) will no longer be first of equals in the 85 million-strong world-wide Anglican Communion.
Christians outside the so-called “Mother Country” and the Mother Church” want a new look post-colonial Anglican Communion.
A report in The Times of January 11, 2025 said that a desire for a leadership review dates back to before the resignation of Welby on January 6 this year.
This is partly due to the bitter controversy about full rights for gays and the Church of England decision to bless same-sex couples.
That could be good news for gays in the UK.
If the Church of England is no longer the moral compass for Anglicans around the world it will be able to do what it wants to do when it comes to accepting the marriage of gay men and women.
It will just be one Anglican church and not the Anglican Church.
The post-colonial new look Anglican Communion will not be a nuisance to anyone at Lambeth House for a while and not before the next meeting of the ACC in the summer of 2026.
This morning, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell (acting ABC) will deliver the Presidential address at the opening of the General Synod.
He ranks alongside Welby as one of the Church of England’s most un-popular clerics.
But that won’t stop him climbing the moral ladder and looking down and pontificating.
He’s very good at that.
Four days of non-stop chat, promises to make the world a better place through a church that, for most people in England, reminds them of the figures in that pathetic little Christian song-cum hymn – We’re poor little lambs who have gone astray, baa, baa, baa.
Does anyone outside this fast fading away sad and sorry for itself religious institution give a damn about anything any of them say about anything?